Patients at a Bracknell surgery have hit out after receiving a ‘rude and impersonal’ letter forcing them to leave the practice.
This comes as Binfield Surgery relocates to its premises in Binfield community centre.
Although still receiving emails about the surgery's new facilities, several postcodes have been removed from its catchment area due to the rising population and increasing new builds in Binfield.
John Mundy, a 70-year-old who lives in Wickery Copse received the letter on July 18 which stated that his family had 30 days to register at a new practice.
He said: “I was very surprised to receive the letter after being a patient with them for 12 years. It has always been a good surgery, so it is disappointing.
“I have looked at the border for the new catchment area and it looks like my house is right on the edge, which is particularly frustrating. It runs right through the middle of my estate.
“To be honest, it wasn’t the fact that we have been forced to move that was frustrating – it is the way that they did it. After being a patient with them for so long I would have expected them to be more understanding and caring, but the letter was extremely blunt.
“The surgery didn’t even have the decency to sign the letters they send out because they wanted to avoid a delay.”
Binfield Surgery told The News that to ensure that GPs do not take on too many patients, the boundaries of each surgery’s catchment areas may change according to the population of an area for time-to-time.
A spokesperson for the surgery said: “The practice boundary for Binfield Surgery changed in 2019. Since that time, we have endeavored to keep the current cohort of patients on our records who became out of our catchment area when our practice boundary changed 4 years ago.
“However, due to the number of new houses that have been built in our catchment area over recent years, and the impact that this has had on patient numbers, we have made the difficult decision to deduct patients who are living outside of our catchment area.
“This is in order to protect the services that we are currently able to provide and enable us to continue to provide a level of care to our patients.”
Although John had no problems registering with another surgery he said that it was ‘unnecessarily complicated’.
He added: “My family didn’t have a problem changing doctors but I can imagine someone who has a lot of medical issues wouldn’t want to change GPs because they have built up a trust with their current one."
