Madam,

As a resident of the Teifi Valley and registered patient with a soon-to-be-abolished/terminated GP practice, I have been informed by Hywel Dda Health Board staff that I, as a patient, will be transferred to another local GP practice.

I am concerned that such measures, in the longer term, are not sustainable. This will only exacerbate the worsening situation of having insufficient GPs in the area and cause a domino effect of decline on a failing health service provision.

Given that the Hywel Dda Health Board already accepts that all health services in the area are in need of modernisation and most politicians seem only to be able to bicker about the location of their electors’ nearest hospital, is it not time for a total review of the Welsh NHS system? We need one which Aneurin Bevan would be proud of and one which would take the Welsh NHS forward until the next century.

As an NHS patient, in need of a registered doctor, living in the Teifi Valley, I am quite prepared to be allocated access to a NHS directly employed doctor and associated staff, located in an NHS building somewhere in the Llandysul area.

This would allow the doctors and other staff to practice community medicine without the burden of business, contract and property management, which may also aid recruitment.

Perhaps they can be temporarily located in one of the many redundant publicly owned buildings, in the area, until Hywel Dda can organise the building of a new integrated community medical facility, in Llandysul. Such an integrated community medical facility would then be able to serve all the local residents and patients from north Carmarthenshire and south Ceredigion, from the “cradle to the grave”, as originally envisaged by Aneurin Bevan.

Yours etc,

John Darnbrook, Pont-Tyweli, Llandysul.

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