The doctor WON’T see you now: Just one GP for every 3,342 patients in the town with worst ratio in Britain – and it’s about to get even worse
On a cold winter’s morning, a steady trickle of patients arrive for their appointments at The Chestnuts Surgery, a long-standing GP practice based in a handsome, 19th-century Huguenot house in the Kent town of Sittingbourne.
Among those who have bagged one of today’s early slots are a young mother who struggles to push her baby-buggy up the steps; a frail-looking old woman with a hacking cough; and a smartly-dressed man with one arm who still sports a poppy on his lapel.
They are the lucky ones.
For in the beleaguered borough of Swale, where the town is situated, there is just one family doctor for every 3,342 registered patients — by far the worst ratio in England, according to a shocking new report.
Typical is the exasperated woman I meet in the pharmacy opposite The Chestnuts, who will only give her surname, Mrs Sullivan.
On January 10, she tells me, the surgery called her to say she must see her doctor to discuss the results of a scan.
Her own GP was booked up until February 24, she was told, though if she phoned back, she might get an earlier appointment with another doctor.
Despite calling every day when the lines open at 8am, however, she has not even been able to get through to reception, all the while fretting that something serious might be wrong with her. ‘This morning, I’ve tried the number 69 times,’ she says angrily, showing me the 69 calls on her mobile phone as proof. ‘I might as well give up.’
Dropping her three-year-old son at a nearby nursery, mother-of-four Katie Evitts, 32, feels equally aggrieved.
Another of her children, Skye, aged four, has cerebral palsy and sometimes needs urgent treatment for swallowing difficulties.