Welcome to the new Parkside Health Matters Blog

Dear Reader,
I’m delighted to welcome you to Parkside’s brand new blog, covering all things health, wellbeing and the latest news from our award-winning hospital.

In this blog, we’ll be providing fresh and original content from our world-renowned Consultants, our brilliant staff and our committed management team – all in one place on our website with a brand new design. We hope you like it.

The type of content you can expect to see here will vary, but will all be relevant, engaging and topical items that we have hand-picked to share with you, our reader. From first-hand accounts on what it’s like to run our busy Outpatients Department to advice, tips and FAQs from our leading Consultants, this new blog is the place to receive all the latest information from our hospital. You’ll also find the latest patient stories, updates on our wellbeing activities and news on upcoming events, so it’s a real mixed bag, but a fantastic resource for our patients and Parkside staff alike. We hope you agree it’s an exciting development.

Recently, we marked one year of the historic partnership between independent sector providers, including Parkside (and parent company Aspen Healthcare), and the NHS, to provide urgent support to the health service in the battle against Covid-19. And it is no accident that we launch this blog just as the country appears to be turning a corner against the Covid pandemic. With the vaccination programme in full swing and the rate of reported infections dropping by the week, it is a relief to finally see some positive news after what has been the longest, and most tragic, 12 months. At Parkside we have been providing essential support to the country’s largest NHS Trusts, and we remain on the front-lines doing what we can to deliver important care and treatments for patients as the country hopefully begins to recover.

Since March 2020 our team at Parkside have overseen many thousands of NHS patient interactions including urgent scans, time-critical operations and outpatient appointments. In what has been a monumental effort from our teams, we have undoubtedly delivered life-saving care, and I am immensely proud of our incredible team for working with great skill, commitment, and courage during these challenging times. Every single one of you, no matter your service or role, has had a part to play in this extraordinary effort and you have provided extraordinary care to patients.

As the country begins to carefully open up, we hope this is the beginning of the end. But we also know that the fallout from the pandemic will be severe, and long-lasting for all aspects of the economy and also for healthcare. We know that waiting times for treatments in England have hit new highs in recent weeks, and we remain on hand as always to provide and deliver exceptional healthcare to all our patients. Our first blogs epitomise this commitment to high-quality healthcare. I am pleased to share with you an article on the Covid-19 vaccine by Aspen Medical Director Dr Zoltan Varga, a piece on the menopause by Private GP Dr Dorota Urbaniak, and an article about obesity and Covid-19 by Consultant General Surgeon Mr Georgios Vasilikostas.

You can also read a piece from Parkside’s Head of Outpatients and Quality, Allison Bullivant, who shares a bit about her role. Patient care and satisfaction is at the heart of our work, and I’m also pleased to share with you a blog post from one of our recent patients, Peter Mason, who recently had both knees partially replaced with the help of MAKO robotic-arm surgery. I hope you find these reads as compelling and as interesting as I did.

Thank you for taking the time to visit our new blog. We’ll be regularly updating this section of the website so do check back for new content. We’d also like to hear your thoughts and views – the best way is by engaging with us on social media. You can find us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn, so please do give us a follow and get involved. We would love to hear from you.

Phil Bates

Hospital Director, Parkside Private Hospital and Cancer Centre London