Practice Profile

Falmouth is Cornwall’s leading south coast resort and home to the County’s Maritime Heritage. Situated at the entrance to some of the most sheltered recreational waters in the country, Falmouth offers excellent opportunities for water sports such as surfing, diving, and windsurfing and exceptional sailing in the Carrick Roads and Fal Estuary.

It is predominantly a maritime and holiday area with local employment in tourism, shipping, boat building, specialist light industry and the arts as well as a distinctly rural surrounding area.

Falmouth has a local population of about 20,000 and a further 10,000 in the adjacent town of Penryn and surrounding villages. This can increase significantly in the summer without overwhelming the local population as happens in some smaller seaside towns in Cornwall. The Practice area includes Falmouth, Penryn and a number of surrounding villages.

Thanks to the influence of the National Maritime Museum, the new University, the Tate in St Ives and the Eden Project, Falmouth is enjoying a renaissance and is one of the most sought after locations in the county. The Peninsula Medical School based in Plymouth and Truro has further enhanced the research and educational facilities available locally.

Falmouth is ten miles from the county town of Truro which is also the location for the district general hospital (Royal Cornwall Hospital, Treliske), the base for nearly all our local consultants and the main referral centre for Cornwall. We are part of the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Primary Care Trust which is located in St Austell.

We are a five Partner practice working from the Health Centre in Falmouth with a list size of just under nine thousand. The surgery building is a PCT owned health centre and we benefit from on site District Nursing, Health Visiting, Midwifery, Chiropody and Mental Health Teams. We are adjacent to Falmouth Community Hospital which has consultant led Eldercare inpatient beds with an Eldercare Day Hospital and inpatient and outpatient physiotherapy.

Our Partners are Dr Andrew Seaman (retiring), Dr Richard James, Dr Nick Rogers, Dr Victoria Hartnell and Dr Féaron Kelly. Dr Stephanie Jackson is employed as a salaried GP. Our experienced Nursing team includes a Nurse Practitioner and the Practice management team consists of a Practice Manager, Geoff Dennis; a Patient Services Manager, Caroline Cable; and a team of reception, administrative and secretarial staff most of whom work part time. The Practice operates a flexible appointment and telephone appointment system which allows patients to pre book face to face and telephone consultations and ensures that patients are dealt with quickly and reduces the pressure on emergency appointments.

We offer a wide range of in-house services, including full contraception, vasectomy, in house ultrasound, child health surveillance, Practice Nurse diabetic and asthma clinics, cardiac rehabilitation, phlebotomy, psychology and alcohol counselling, and have facilities for a wide range of extended diagnostic and therapeutic services including, spirometry, audiography, 24-hour ambulatory blood pressure monitoring, cardiac event monitoring, minor surgery and rigid sigmoidoscopy.

We meet our cervical cytology, childhood immunisation and other targets and we have excellent QoF performance. Drs Hartnell and Rogers operate a very successful Level 2 Sexual Health DES service for the locality and we are active members of our local Practice Based Commissioning group.

We are an enthusiastic EMIS Practice and we continue to develop paperless systems and adopt innovative solutions where they benefit Doctors and patients. We offer secure on line appointment and repeat prescription ordering services. We use Choose and Book and we are accredited for the IM&T DES.

We offer a degree of Occupational Health Services to local industry especially maritime and we are actively involved with the RNLI. We have an energetic and enthusiastic Friends group who raise money for new equipment for our patients and organise several social events.

We are actively involved in training medical students with the Peninsula Medical School and we are finalising our accreditation to take registrars.

Out of hours cover is provided by the PCT through Serco Ltd.

Visit our web site www.faldoc.co.uk for more information and links to useful local and national resources.

Further information can be obtained from the following Internet links. 

Combined Univerities of Cornwall
University of Exeter, Cornwall Campus 
Peninsula Medical School
Eden Project
University College, Falmouth
National Maritime Museum
Cornwall & Isles of Scilly Health Online 
Cornwall LMC
Cornwall's Health Service Intranet  (NHS net only) 
Local non medical links  
www.thisiscornwall.co.uk  
Property in Cornwall