THE simple answer is probably “No”.

There is a longer and more in-depth article to be written here but we thought we wanted to write a piece and put the question out for debate.

No doubt there are people in Harlow who have had good experiences with their surgery and those who have had bad experiences.

But this may not be about how you feel but more about what you are going to get.

However, a number of readers have contacted us and asked when the GP surgeries are going to get back to normal?

We did approach the West Essex Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) and asked them a couple of questions.

Q. When do Harlow surgery expect to get back to “normal”, that is to say, when can patients expect face to face meeting with their GP?

Perhaps you could detail your route map out?

West Essex CCG said: “GP practices across the West Essex CCG area have been open to patients throughout the pandemic, offering a range of appointments via telephone and video consultations and face to face appointments to those who need them.

“As the COVID-19 restrictions ease, practices are continuing to offer face to face appointments to patients based on clinical need. To make sure patients and staff remain safe and reduce the spread of the virus, everyone must continue to follow social distancing and hygiene measures and wear a face covering when entering the surgery.”

This may well be an unsatisfactory answer, then again, it took them nine days to come up with this five line response.

Therefore, may be it it is better to speak to someone at the coalface. We spoke to someone who has been working in GP surgeries for decades.

They said: “The idea of thirty people with a variety of ailments all packed into a badly ventilated room did not make sense pre-pandemic and makes even less sense now.

We may now have the opportunity to consign to history ways of working that came out of post-war welfare state.

We also have to accept that there are less GPs. Again, we were struggling for numbers before March 2020 and we now have to adapt a system around that fact.

This is also an opportunity to work in a much more modern and forward thinking way. I could go into details regarding health hubs, appointments with a different range of practitioners and not necessarily the doctor.

I am not saying everything will be good. There are people who establish a relationship with their doctor and want to see their doctor. Quite right too but I can see that ending up as a luxury.

Again, before March 2020, very few people had heard of Zoom or Microsoft Teams. Many people spend a lot of time speaking to their family via on-line portals. They may now have the opportunity to interact with their surgery in a similar way.

Coronavirus may well have “helped” to accelerate man things when it comes down to local health services. You can deny that bit it may well be inevitable”.

There will be change. There may well be further privatisation.

But that doesn’t mean the people of Harlow should accept low standards.

The people of Harlow may well need better representation within the community.

There has to be a very big effort to ensure that Harlow patients are not patronised, bullied, short changed or the victims/recipients of a two tier health service that is no more than a medical apartheid.

If there are patient participation groups then we, having published over 22,000 stories, have never heard of them, which may well lead you to a certain conclusion.

As we said this is intended to be a springboard for debate. Let us know what you think.