It has been quite a hectic week for me. On Monday, my mother was taken into Lymington Hospital’s Medical Assessment Unit. Thankfully, my mother already works at Lymington Hospital so it wasn’t far to go!

Whilst I was there over the next two days, I spoke to members of the Lymington Hospital “friends” about “The Practice” – a comparatively recent initiative to make local healthcare more efficient, and more effective, for both patient and staff.

The Practice is made up of seven local GP practices who have provided this extra ‘branch’ at Lymington New Forest Hospital.

The Practice opened in September and will give the 60,000 patients of the seven partner surgeries access to more options when it comes to their care.

The Practice’s stated aim is to increase the amount of access people in Lymington, and the south of the New Forest, have to healthcare specialists.

Patients are able to book appointments by ringing their local surgery. They have the choice of seeing their regular GP or making an appointment at The Practice.

The centre at Lymington Hospital will open from 8am to 8pm, seven days a week, and provide access to same-day and some routine appointments.

The Practice, which is able to support about 100 patients a day, has better linked patients with other services at Lymington Hospital without patients having to travel to other surgeries for care.

As somebody who found himself catching the X1 bus from Lymington to Milford then back again for many months two years ago in order to receive specialist care for my left leg (which has a long history of being a royal pain), I am very pleased to see such an initiative prove to be such a success.

This is completely the right thing to do. Not only is there a guarantee of these surge rise remaining open, the demand upon them (from a rapidly ageing population, it has to be said) is reduced.

My only concern is that Southern Health will hestate at paying for the extra staff that will be needed thanks to the iniative’s success.