Nightingale News - Spring 2026

Health Event 20th June

We are excited to be hosting an event at the Nightingale Practice, 10 Kenninghall Road E5 8BY on Saturday 20 June. This event, between 10am and 2pm, is (1) for any patients living with pain and (2) members of the black community who have high blood pressure (hypertension).

The event is a collaboration between Hackney Downs Neighbourhood Forum and Hackney Downs Primary Care Network (PCN). Local community organisations will be running stalls to share information about health, wellbeing and local activities available to residents. We hope to create a warm, relaxed and welcoming space for people.

Hackney Downs Neighbourhood Forum is inviting local people to join group discussions focused on living with, and managing, ongoing pain. The discussions are a continuation of conversations that began during the Community Pain Support Forum held last November, where residents shared the importance of having more local support. 

On 20 June, residents will have another opportunity to talk about their experiences, learn more about local community services, and help shape a supportive resident-led network.

We welcome residents who are living with back pain, fatigue, hip pain, pain linked to injuries, sickle cell, thalassemia, cancer-related pain, or other long-term pain conditions. However, you must be registered with one of the practices in the Hackney Downs PCN area ie Nightingale, Fountayne Road, Clapton, Riverside or Healy practices.

There will also be Q&A sessions for members of the black community to talk about high blood pressure, starting at 11.15am. Please note: it’s ‘first come, first served’ and numbers are limited.

A free lunch and refreshments will be provided on the day.

Core Funding

Dr Williams started by explaining that the money GP surgeries get from the NHS is called ‘core funding’. Core funding has just increased to £130 per patient, per year.

In theory, this is all the money you need to run a surgery. But it needs to cover salaries for all staff (including the doctors, nurses, receptionists, the manager and the admin team) and all ‘premises costs’ (for example, heating and lighting bills, cleaning and insurance), as well as the things that all GPs need to buy, like medical supplies and equipment.

This £130 per patient does not depend on how often a patient contacts the surgery or is seen at the surgery, or at home. Dr Williams explains: “Some patients on our list don’t contact us at all, or rarely. But others consult us very frequently, even weekly. Some need home visits.”

The situation is made even more difficult by a government adjustment that provides more money for the care of older patients. Dr Williams says: “In Hackney, we have low numbers of older people. This means the size of the Nightingale’s patient list is adjusted downwards, so we don't even get the full £130 for every patient registered with us. This is despite the fact our patients are getting ‘older people’s’ health problems approximately 20 years ahead of people living in wealthier boroughs.

“In summary, the total amount of core funding we get, spread across all it needs to cover, doesn’t buy very much care. It really is a pitiful amount of funding.”

Other funding

GP practices can bring in additional income by providing additional NHS services. 

These include national initiatives like immunisations for children and for diseases like ‘flu (although at c£10 per vaccination, our ‘flu clinics barely cover costs). Some services are local ie offered by the local health system (the Integrated Care Board or ICB). In Hackney, these include the long-term conditions contract, which pays us to provide more checks and better outcomes for patients with long term conditions – for example, better blood pressure control, better diabetes control and more diabetic patients having their foot checks and eye checks. 

The Nightingale also gets paid extra for its frail home visiting contact, which pays us to provide regular proactive home visits to our housebound population four times a year to keep them healthy, rather than waiting for them to get ill and contact us.

Dr Willaims said: “At the Nightingale, we sign up for as many of these extra contracts as we can. 

“It is good for patients to have a surgery that offers extra care to a higher standard, and we can use the contract money to employ more staff so that all patient care becomes better. 
“However, many of these additional contracts are under threat due to cuts at the ICBs. We are waiting to hear about some of them for 2026-27 and there is a more uncertainty about 2027-28.”

Why does this matter

As we have reported before in this newsletter, GPs have voted to reject the latest contract imposed on them by the Department of Health. Because people don’t understand how GP surgeries are funded, this will almost certainly be covered in the media as “fat cat GPs” wanting more money for themselves. 

However, what the media and people in general don’t (or won’t, in some cases) understand is: GPs are fighting for enough money to continue to provide a good level of services to their patients. It is not about bigger salaries for them. 

This is why it also matters when hospitals push ‘unfunded’ work over to GPs. Hospitals are funded separately to GP surgeries. Hospital specialists are responsible for organising any tests they want a patient to have, and they are responsible for giving out every result of every test they have organised to the patient. This makes sense because they know why they did the test. They are the ones who can interpret the result and decide the next step. 

Dr Williams says: “Every time a hospital asks us to do a test on their behalf, or tells a patient to contact us for a result of a test they did, it creates unfunded work for the surgery and uses up appointment capacity that should be available for GP-type work (like patients calling us because they are unwell, for example). 

“That is why we push back against this and some of you may have experienced being asked to contact your specialist for a result that you have contacted us for, or been told that we have refused to do a task that should have been done by your specialist (although we will always let you know when we do this).

“We can only afford to employ so many staff, and they need to be fully available for general practice work for you.”

What our patients can do to help

• Spread the word – the more people who understand how little funding GPs receive to look after their patients, the better. We need public pressure to change things. Politicians should not be able to hide behind “fat cat GP” misinformation.
• Try to be understanding if we say ‘no’ to something a hospital specialist asks us to do for you – we will let you know when we have done this and we will let the specialist know that they need to do it for you themselves.
• Chase up queries about hospital appointments with the hospital directly - we will redirect you to do this if you contact us, but that still uses up our resources.
• Help the Nightingale to reduce waste – for example, if we are forced to text you, we have to pay a fee. But if you are signed up to the NHS app with ‘notifications enabled’ and you look at a message we send you within 24 hours, we save the text fee. (To explain: a text is only sent to patients who are not signed up to the NHS app, who don’t have ‘notifications enabled’ or who don’t read their NHS app message within 24 hours). 

Are you still a bit scared of the NHS App?

We can help you

“The NHS app is great. It makes life SO much easier.” This is what one patient told us recently – and she was someone who resisted ‘new technology’ at first.

“I have a smart phone, but I don’t do much with it tbh, except make calls and take photos. I’m a complete fool when it comes to anything else. I don’t even really know what an app is!” she added. 

However, after being persuaded to try using the NHS app to make her Nightingale appointments and to order prescriptions, she is a complete convert. 

It's really so very easy!

“Honestly, it’s SO easy. All you do is send a text message before 9am and a doctor calls you back that very day. It saves me loads of time and stress in the early morning, trying to get through on the phone. You just sent your text and then you’re done, until you get a call back.”

We asked if she felt she was missing out by not speaking to a receptionist ‘in person’ to make her appointment. 

“No - not at all. In fact, I feel more in control because I know my text message will go to the doctor exactly as I have written it. No danger of information being ‘lost in translation’. Not that I don’t trust a receptionist to communicate my message – of course I do. But why waste their time (and mine) if you don’t have to?”

If you can use the NHS app to make appointments and re-order your regular prescriptions, please do so. It saves the Nightingale time and money, and it helps free the phones for people who really can’t use an app or don’t have a suitable phone, for example because of age, financial circumstances or disability.

Through until 18 August, we are running free digital support sessions at the Nightingale on selected Tuesdays, between 10am and noon. Why not come along and learn a new skill? It could make your life much easier. And you will be helping other people.

It's your Nigthingale Surgery

You said, we did!

At the last Friends of the Nightingale meeting, Practice Manager Jill White reported on the success of the new call handling service. 

“Patients used to wait up to 30 minutes for the ‘phone to be answered. We set ourselves a target to answer 80% of calls within 10 minutes, but we now achieve 96.2% of calls answered within 10 minutes. And our new service also allows you to arrange a call back if you want.”

Jill also told the meeting about plans for a 1st floor waiting area for patients with autism that will be more comfortable for them, as well as a breastfeeding area for new mums. 

Finally, Jill confirmed that the surgery staff have made efforts to declutter the reception area. You should see fewer old posters, for example.

Your ideas are welcome

Have you got ideas about what we can do to make your surgery visit better? If so, you are very welcome contact us.

One suggestion at the meeting was to pay for good quality photos of the GPs and other Nightingale staff to be displayed in the reception area, to replace the ‘blanks’ we have there at the moment.

Would you like support to return to an HIV Clinic?

Terrence Higgins Trust has launched a ‘Reconnect’ campaign to support people living with HIV who struggle to go to their clinic appointments. 

This could be for many reasons such as stigma, feeling worried about being judged for missing appointments and other life pressures, including bereavement, housing issues, caring responsibilities and mental health issues. People facing these challenges need understanding and support. That’s why this campaign aims to provide a safe space to talk things through and practical support to get back to an HIV clinic. 

Anyone can contact THT Direct (a free and confidential helpline run by Terrence Higgins Trust) to chat and get advice. If they’re ready, they can then be referred into any HIV clinic in London.

Visit their website for more details or look out for a poster in the Nightingale reception. 

The Debt Talk CIC drop-in sessions at Hackney Central Library are open to all residents and are not limited to the Bangladeshi community. While the CIC was originally founded to amplify Brit-Bangla voices, their community outreach sessions are free and confidential, offering support for anyone in the borough.

Learn more about Debt Talk

What is Together Better?

Some new things for you to try this summer for free!

Don’t let the fact that “I’ve never done that before” discourage you from having a go. You only have to try. It’s free. If it’s not for you, you don’t have to go again. But, who knows, you may find a new enthusiasm. What have you got to lose? Here are three suggestions for Together Better-organised activities that all currently have space in their classes.

Step Aerobics

AI tells us that step aerobics is a ‘high-energy, low-impact cardio workout that uses an elevated platform (the step). By stepping up, down, and around the board to the beat of music, you improve cardiovascular health, build lower-body strength, and boost your coordination.’ Try it, for free, with Together Better on Tuesday mornings.

Circuit Training

If you look at Wikipedia, the description of circuit training is, admittedly, rather frightening. ‘Circuit training is a form of body conditioning. It targets strength building and muscular endurance. An exercise "circuit" is completion of all set exercises in the programme. When one circuit is completed, one begins the first exercise again for the next circuit.’ 

Please be reassured that our instructor is both kind and experienced. They will give you exercises that suit you and your level of fitness, so you can improve over time and build your personal strength and fitness at your own pace.

Shiatsu Massage and exercise

Shiatsu (again, according to AI) is a Japanese therapy that uses thumb and palm pressure along energy pathways (meridians) to help with tension. When combined with exercise, it increases flexibility, helps release tight muscles and improves mobility. Why not try it? There’s a free class every other Friday.

We raised £200 for St Joseph's

Our Together Better group raised £200 for St Joseph’s Hospice by holding a raffle at our regular coffee morning. 

If you bought a raffle ticket – thank you. And many thanks also to Ann (who donated most of the lovely prizes); to Azmina (who organised the money for us), and to the Nightingale staff - including Dr Eleanor Jacob, who contributed a very nice handbag to be raffled off. 

This coffee morning, back in March, also happened to be Tom Fearon’s last before he left us. (Tom is seen above, back row, right.) We gave him a good send off!

Congratulations to Maria!

Published: Jun 10, 2026