FINANCIAL pressures coupled with recruitment problems are to blame for the closure of a Bournemouth health practice, according to GPs.
GP partners at Winton Health Centre, in Alma Road, said losses “in the hundreds of thousands of pounds in the last year” are partly to blame for their “difficult” decision to terminate their contract from the end of July.
Twenty-two redundancies are to be made as a result of the closure, but the process of relocating more than 10,000 registered patients has been “smooth”.
Speaking at a drop-in session for patients at Winton Health Centre on Wednesday night, Ian Gray, general manager at Poole Bay & Bournemouth Primary Care Network, said: “We provided NHS Dorset with all the postcodes of the patients and they then collate it on their systems.
“Letters will then go out telling people where they will be moving to and it has all been absolutely fine - we’ve only had two or three people who have said they haven’t had letters yet out of 10,000.
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“There is also the legacy of the Alma partnership, and there have been challenges with trying to recruit in Winton despite the fact we improved the CQC score from ‘requires improvement’ and being near to closing in 2019 to ‘good’.”
He added that financial pressures due to “inadequate funding” have meant the practice “cannot guarantee delivery of good, safe healthcare”.
Practice business manager at the Shelley Manor Holdenhurst Medical Centre, Emma Prince, said additional funding would be given to practices taking on Winton patients.
“We are such a large practice anyway – we have 25,000 patients and we are taking on around 1,000 from Winton.
“It is a good thing as it is an additional investment for other practices, but we all have to think about how we use that investment to support those additional patients.”
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Cllr Matthew Gillett, the Lib Dem councillor for Talbot & Branksome Woods, present at the drop-in session, said: “The main thing is making sure the patients get moved across to a new surgery.
“Obviously, it is really disappointing that they can't continue with the surgery. The partners have told me the funding hasn’t made it economic for an NHS general practice.”
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