The following are extracts from practice newsletters and articles in the local village magazines:

The cake stall at the Medstead Village Fete raised a fantastic £538 which will be used by FOBS to provide additional facilities for the patients of Boundaries Surgery, including medical equipment not otherwise readily available from the NHS.

Thank you to everyone who contributed to this achievement in making cakes, setting up and manning the stall – we really appreciate your efforts!

On Saturday, November 27 at 7.30pm, we will have the privilege of Alder Valley Brass Band returning to perform a concert at the Church of the Good Shepherd in aid of FOBS. (They recently came third in a Southern area competition and will be competing in Harrogate in September in the National Final) Please mark this date in your diary and support us if you can. It should be a very enjoyable evening and when they performed two years ago, the concert proved to be very popular. Tickets will be available at Boundaries Surgery reception or any committee member from September.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your support.
Lyn Sandford, Chairman of FOBS.

Vaccination against Swine Flu is now available to patients in the following groups:

1. Adults and children over 6 months of age, who have a long-term health condition, including:
   • Chronic lung disease
   • Chronic heart disease
   • Chronic kidney disease
   • Chronic liver disease
   • Chronic neurological diseases
   • Diabetes mellitus
   • Immunosuppression caused by a disease or treatment
2. Pregnant women at any stage of pregnancy
3. People who live in the same house as someone whose immune system is compromised by disease or treatment

Following a growth in the number of patients registered at Boundaries, we are concerned about the delays being experienced when trying to telephone the surgery. After careful consideration of the possible solutions, we have decided to discontinue our current practice of accepting requests for repeat prescriptions over the telephone. This change will take effect on 2 January 2010.

We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause and hope our patients will understand the need to ensure the telephone lines (and reception staff) are available to deal with more urgent enquiries.

Please remember that repeat prescriptions can be requested using the slip that accompanies your medication or via the form on our website.

We are delighted to welcome Janet Dance to the Boundaries Team. Janet will be working in our reception/dispensary and is looking forward to getting to know our patients.

We are delighted to welcome Anne Davis who will be working at Boundaries when our nurses are on holiday. Anne has been a Practice Nurse in the local area for many years and we are delighted to welcome her to the practice team.

We have removed one of the flower beds from our car park in order to create a disabled parking bay. Signage will be in place shortly and we should be grateful if you would only park in this space if you are disabled.

Please remember if our car park is full, the management of The Windmill Pub have kindly agreed that patients may park in their car park whilst visiting the surgery.

A reminder that requests can now be made via our website using the online form. Please remember to always give us 2 working days notice when requesting a repeat prescription.

Thank you to all our patients who took action to defend the surgery from the recent threat to our Dispensing Service posed by the Pharmacy White Paper. Your voices were heard by the government and consequently the Dispensing Service provided by Boundaries (and many other surgeries throughout the country) has been protected. We are now looking at ways to develop and improve our Dispensing Service and are pleased to announce that we can now accept payment by most debit/credit cards.

We are very grateful to the management at the Windmill Pub who have kindly agreed that patients may continue to use their car park when the surgery car park is full.