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19
Mar
Details revealed of Harrogate GP surgery merger
Two of Harrogate’s seven GP surgeries are to become one next month, following several years of collaboration together.
East Parade and Park Parade surgeries, which are both housed in Mowbray Square Medical Centre off Westmoreland Street, will merge on April 1 to become Strayside Health.
Emma Keating, business manager at East Parade Surgery, said:
We have explored merging in the past, but it never quite got off the ground, due to various reasons.
Due to the changing landscape in primary care, we feel that merging is going to give us the much-needed resilience to continue to provide high-quality primary care to our patients.
The two practices have worked closely since moving into Mowbray Square in 2009, and have shared their back office staff – medical secretaries, clinical administration and data quality teams – for several years. Since 2021, they have also shared nursing teams.
The two practices share Mowbray Square Medical Centre with the Spa Surgery, and together the three have more than 30,000 patients.
Under the Strayside Health banner, the new unified practice will have a single patient services team, GP team and senior leadership team.
Ms Keating said:
We believe that a single larger practice will allow us to pool the skills of our wonderful team members to create a truly sustainable organisation that is equipped to survive and thrive in the NHS of the future.
Our staff are really enthusiastic about the merger, and as mentioned previously, we have worked tirelessly to align our clinical and administrative protocols before the legal merger to make the merge as seamless as possible for our patients and colleagues.
There has been a wave of mergers and closures of GP surgeries across the UK in recent years, driven by several factors, including a decline in numbers of GPs, increasing numbers of patients, an ageing population, and challenges with funding and staffing.
In addition to the practices at Mowbray Square Medical Centre, Harrogate also has the Church Avenue Surgery, the Kingswood Surgery, the Leeds Road Practice and Moss Healthcare.
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