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Jan

Last Updated: 01/02/2024

Merger of three Ripon doctors’ surgeries to be discussed this weekend

by Flora Grafton

| 30 Jan, 2024

An open morning is being held this weekend to discuss plans to merge three Ripon doctors’ surgeries.

North House Surgery has proposed to merge with Park Street Surgery and Ripon Spa Surgery on July 1, 2024.

North House Surgery patients can give their views online here or attend the open morning at the practice on North Street from 10.30am to noon. Park Street Surgery and Ripon Spa Surgery will also be holding open mornings at the same time for their own patients.

In a post about the move online, North House Surgery said there were four main reasons behind the merger: better patient care, making it easier to recruit and retain staff, creating a stronger voice for patients and benefiting from economies of scale.

The move would bring together 12 GP partners, seven salaried GPs and 24 other clinical staff catering for 24,000 patients.

The surgery post adding:

“By pooling resources from across all three practices, we will be able to create a larger team of specialist staff and clinicians to care for our patients, and provide all patients registered in Ripon with the same high standard of care.

“We strongly believe that a larger practice will enable us to better recruit and retain talented staff.

“Also, by sharing the vast amount of experience that all three practices have in training medical students and junior GPs, we can expand the training opportunities that we can offer to an even wider range of medical professionals. This will help us continue to attract high calibre clinicians and secure the long-term provision of GP services for the city and surrounding villages.”

A spokesperson for North House Surgery today told the Stray Ferret the plans were “not set in stone” and, if approved, all three practices would still remain open and operate under one name.

The spokesperson added they “could not comment at the moment” on how the individual practices would operate thereafter.

The surgery also said online:

"We recognise that this merger will reduce the number of practices that a patient can register at in Ripon from three practices to one.

"However, we believe that the benefits outlined above outweigh this reduction. The choice of which GP a patient can make an appointment with will also increase to 19."

The practice said it will "let people know what patients said via posters around the surgery" after Friday, March 15.

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Merger of three Ripon doctors’ surgeries to be discussed this weekend

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