The Practice is long established, and originally dates back to the 1920’s. It is now named in honour of Geoffrey Dekeyser, our Senior Partner until 1993, who retired after 43 years as a family doctor in Morley.
The town itself has changed radically over the years, at one time being a prosperous textile borough with impressive (and still present) town hall and independence to match. The town centre is now pedestrianised for shoppers and includes a thriving indoor market.
None of the mills are now working. However, small business diversification, easy access to the M1, M62 and M621 motorways, extensive house building in the mid range market, has brought an influx of population, especially young families.
Close proximity to Leeds, Wakefield, Dewsbury and Bradford for commuting, value for money housing and good locality based shopping are the attractions. The White Rose Centre, a massive retail complex opened in 1997 off the Leeds outer ring road, is just to the north of the town.
As a consequence of the above factors, the Practice list size has more than doubled in the last 15 years, currently standing at approximately 16,000 patients. The Partnership now stands at 5 full-time Partners, 1 three-quarter time Partner and 1 half time Partner.
We have also appointed a number of full-time salaried doctors, in post since April 2001.
We have been a PMS Practice for several yeas which has allowed development of practice services including extra commitment to managing chronic disease and extensive clinical protocols are in operation as is the necessary audit chain, and computer templates to ensure retrievable data for QOF.
Our large and comprehensively skilled nursing team provide the bedrock of our chronic disease management along with family planning, travel and immunisation services, and the Minor Illness Clinic, plus all the standard Practice Nursing skills including cervical cytology, dressings, venopuncture, ECGs etc.
Partners offer skills in specific areas of expertise and we all “internally refer” which could often mean that a secondary care referral is unnecessary. We also now provide a city wide endoscopy service for the United Leeds Hospital Trust, throughput being 1500 cases per year. Other clinics include Cystoscopy, Sigmoidoscopy, Minor Surgery and Urology. The treatment area has been extensively refurbished over the last few years. Our x-ray facility is currently redundant, but we are actively looking to replace the equipment with the possible addition of an ultrasound facility as well. We also provide an ENT service from the Parkside Medical Centre in Beeston.
