Presentation Of £20,000 Ultrasound Scanner

The Rotherwick Foundation has donated a £20,000 ultrasound scanner to Hook and Hartley Wintney Medical Partnership.

The scanner at the Hartley Whitney surgery in Chapter Terrace will enable the practice to extend its services and provisionally scan patients before referral to hospital. It will provide them with a convenient local service - reducing the need to wait for a hospital appointment for a scan -and help increase speed of diagnosis as well as playing a pivotal role in plans to open a gynaecology clinic next year.

Trustee of the Rotherwick Foundation and Managing Director of Elite Hotels Mr Graeme Bateman and Tylney Hall General Manager Miss Rita Mooney presented Senior Partner Dr Howard Barns with the scanner.

The Rotherwick Foundation, a registered charity, provides financial support to selected projects in the fields of education, public health, religion and other carefully chosen charitable projects. The foundation is the main beneficiary of three hotels – Tylney Hall in Rotherwick; the Grand Hotel in Eastbourne, East Sussex and Ashdown Park in Wych Cross, East Sussex, and the charity focuses on assisting projects within a 20-mile radius of the hotels.

Dr Barns said: “Ultraound scanning as a dignostic tool in medicine has become increasingly important over the last 20 years, and the number of scans requested has increased very dramatically.  As a consequence of this, and a national shortage of ultrasonographers, hospitals are struggling to keep down waiting times for these tests, despite their best efforts.”

He explained ultrasound scanning involves no ionising radiation, like Xrays, and is a very safe investigation. But it depends very much on the skill of the operator to produce good images and interpret them correctly.  The scanner will initially be used by Dr Barns and the surgery is seeking a suitably expert ultrasonographer to perform scanning in the surgery, providing a service to patients which is both more locally accessible, and also without waiting times, increasing convenience to the patient and speed of diagnosis.

“The surgery is already some way down the road to providing a gynaecology clinic, in association with a consultant gynaecologist, and ultrasound scanning will be an integral part of this service, looking for conditions such as ovarian cysts and fibroids,” said Dr Barns.  “We hope in due course to able to scan for conditions such as gallstones or kidney stones, bladder emptying problems, prostate enlargement, deep vein thromboses and some problems in ante-natal care.   There has been much discussion at a national level regarding a screening programme to detect abdominal aortic aneurysms, dilation of one of the large arteries that carry blood from the heart to the rest of the body. The condition is relatively easily detected by ultrasound scanning and if screening is rolled out nationally this could save thousands of lives each year.”

“One of the first steps in achieving any of these benefits is to acquire a scanner, and we are very grateful to the Rotherwick Foundation for their generous support and foresight in helping us take this first step.”

Previous Hampshire beneficiaries of the Rotherwick Foundation include the North Hampshire Hospitals NHS Trust in Basingstoke and Lord Wandsworth College in Long Sutton. The Rotherwick Foundation also makes an annual donation to the Marie Curie Cancer Care nursing in the local community.

The Hook and Hartley Wintney Medical Partnership has grown steadily since 1920 when two partners set up practice in Hartley Wintney covering the whole area. There are now ten doctors working from two surgeries in Hartley Wintney and Hook providing GP services to 16,000 patients living in the area.