Another Plymouth doctors surgery is closing down this week

A Plymouth doctors surgery will close its doors to patients for the last time this Friday.

Those seen at Chard Road Medical Centre in St Budeaux will now have to go to Stirling Road Surgery, which is around a nine minute walk away.

It comes as provider Access Health Care (AHC) has made the move to "develop sustainable services for patients".

Social enterprise Access Health Care, which is a subsidiary of Devon Doctors, added that ongoing issues with GP services in the city demands that they make the best use of their resources.

A concerned patient called Plymouth Live about the closure, as he claimed he had not been officially told about it - but AHC say a consultation was undertaken with Health Watch surveys and questionnaires.

This month, notices in the surgery's windows stated that clinical appointments were restricted from March 5 and as of March 11, no clinical staff were operating from the Chard Road premesis. Instead, patients were being seen at Stirling Road.

Chard Road Surgery (Image: Penny Cross / Plymouth Live)

Access Health Care’s GP service and development lead, James Short, said: “Access Health Care has been commissioned to provide a number of practices in Plymouth, including Chard Road Medical Centre, which have been merged into a single contract.

“Our remit was to develop sustainable services for patients – more of the same simply wasn’t an option. The ongoing issue with GP services in Plymouth demands we make best use of the available resources at our disposal and it simply does not make sense to operate two separate premises less than a mile apart.

“Access Health Care is committed to redesigning services to better meet the needs of patients.

"This consolidation of resources, and the efficiencies it delivers, will ensure this continues to be the case, with patients who previously used the branch surgery at Chard Road being accommodated just down the road at the Stirling Road Medical Centre.

The letters on the window of Chard Road Surgery (Image: Penny Cross/Plymouth Live)

“In reaching this decision, we have sought to be open and worked with the patient participation group at Chard Road, while there was also a survey of patients, as well as posters advising them of our proposal.”

Access Health Care's website states that their aim at Stirling Road is to provide a professional-yet-personal health service for patients ‘from the cradle to the grave’, to quote NHS founder William Beveridge.

They run six surgeries in Plymouth: Chard Road, Collings Park, Ernesettle, Mount Gould, Stirling Road, and Trelawny surgeries.

In March last year, Plymouth Live reported that health bosses failed to find a new provider to take on the six crisis-hit GP surgeries above.

Access Health Care are tenants at Chard Road so said they were not in a position to say what might happen to the site.

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As a result, the surgeries looking after 34,000 Plymouth patients were being managed by Access Health Care, who at the time were the interim provider.

A letter was sent out to all patients at Stirling Road, Collings Park, Chard Road, Ernesettle, Mount Gould (incorporating Freedom) and Trelawny surgeries in early February to say that the NHS received no formal bids for the contract.

The aim was to find a provider willing to take on a contract spanning all six surgeries which the NHS hoped would enable the practices to work at a scale to attract more staff, including GPs, and broaden its range of services and extend opening hours.

As a result, the NHS agreed an extension of arrangements with Access Health Care until March 2020.

A spokesperson for Northern, Eastern and Western Devon Clinical Commissioning Group and NHS England, which commission GP services, said: “We’ve agreed the closure of Chard Road on the basis that it will help make the Mayflower group more resilient for the future, with more staff together under one roof.

"This is an example of sensible estate management. We’re also pleased that Access Health Care has promised to increase the number of parking spaces available to patients at Stirling Road.”