Providers revealed for new GP services

Birtle View School, site for the new Heywood GP practice.

NHS Heywood, Middleton and Rochdale (NHS HMR) has revealed which providers will deliver four new GP practices and a GP-led health centre planned for the borough.

The four new practices will be located in Heywood, Rochdale, Balderstone and Smallbridge. The practices are being supplied by a mixture of providers including local GP’s and some new to the area.

Oldham-based Go to Doc Primary Care will be the provider for both the Heywood and Balderstone practices.

The Heywood practice will be located at the former Birtle View School site and the Balderstone practice on the current derelict Queens Drive flats site.

Rochdale-based GP Care Services will be the provider for the Rochdale Practice, which will be based at Morrisons, Kingsway and County Durham-based IntraHealth will cover the Smallbridge practice, which is located at the former Ralph Williams Clinic.

Each GP Practice will offer core GP services as well as a programme of locally enhanced services (LES). These include developing Cardiovascular Risk Registers, diagnosis and treatment of hypertension and diabetes, stop smoking service, weight management service, and Choose and Book.

The new health centre will be located within the Middleton Arndale Shopping Centre, on the first floor. The provider is Hope Citadel, led by local GP Dr Fred Thomason. It is a unique model working with charity partners such as The Salvation Army and The Lighthouse Project to address all of the factors that contribute to health, including lifestyle, money and community.

As well as providing core and locally enhanced services, the health centre will have a focus on children and the families.
It will provide a breast feeding awareness programme, Chlamydia screening, a child health promotion programme and advice for young, vulnerable or single parents. The decision to provide children’s services from this centre was made to support the relocation of services in June 2009 from Booth Hall Children’s Hospital in Manchester.

All PCT’s across the country are developing a new health centre as part of the Next Stage Review of the NHS, published last year, but NHS HMR was one of only 38 PCT’s to receive additional funding for the new practices to increase access to doctors across the borough.

Vivienne Ben-David, lead commissioner for primary and community care, adults and older people, commented: “We have delivered the largest GP access procurement in England. We feel that we have secured excellent value for money and quality with the services we have procured and the new providers are very committed to making Heywood, Middleton and Rochdale a healthier place to live.

“NHS HMR, the Providers and Rochdale Borough Council hope to develop these services in partnership and provide care that best suits the needs of the local population. The new providers will bring more GP’s to the borough, helping to make it easier to see a doctor and will take away some of the pressure faced by our existing GP’s. This means that as well as treating illness, we will be able to really tackle the issues that make our population ill in the first place.

“The new GP services are proactive in their nature and will actively seek out people that need care but may not know it. The new practices want to enter into the local community as seamlessly as possible and will encourage patients to be involved. There is a commitment to work with and for local communities, to work alongside the Local Authority and with the PCT in delivering healthcare. Together with existing practices these new services will work hard to move Rochdale healthcare to have a more preventative focus and further enhance the high quality of care that is already provided.”

All of the services will be open by December this year. Patients will be able to register once each service is up and running.