GP surgeries in Sandy and Biggleswade plan merger

Two surgeries in Sandy and Biggleswade are planning to merge at the end of the month.
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Sandy’s Shannon Court surgery is set to merge with the Saffron Health Partnership which has surgeries in Biggleswade and Langford on March 31.

Last week the two surgeries held an open evening to explain the move to patients.

In a newsletter to patients, Dr Amanda Taylor, senior partner at Saffron, said there had been major changes to the practice over the past few years.

“With a fall in GP numbers nationally we have had to evolve to ensure we can treat and see as many patients as possible. We have increased our Nurse Prescribers, introduced a Paramedic, increased our practices nurses’ provision and created a home visiting team. We became a training Practice for medical students and added two GP registrars to our team. We also have regular appointments at the surgery with MSK practitioner, a social prescriber and also an adult mental health link worker and over the next few weeks a children’s mental health link worker is joining the team,” she said.

“We have also developed closer working relationships with our neighbouring Practices and the outcome of which being the delivery of extended access appointments on weekends and evenings in Biggleswade and Sandy.

“To enhance these working relationships further and to produce economies of scale we have decided to merger with a similar like-minded practice, Shannon Court surgery in Sandy.

“SHP’s ambition is to take forwards the development of our multi-professional team and in time add additional health professionals to increase the range of services we can offer to our patients. This can only be achieved by having a larger population and geographical footprint.

“We would like to reassure you that both practices are committed to maintaining the services at Shannon Court, and all the regular doctors will still be working at Shannon Court.

“Our plan is for this merger to take place on 31st March but then an integration phase lasting a few months as we work to align our systems across the two practices. The formal NHS contract will be held by the Saffron Health Partnership,. We have discussed these plans with NHS England and Bedfordshire Clinical Commissioning Group and have been very encouraged by their support.

“Inevitably there will be some changes in the way we work, but we believe these will be for the better. We are committed to offering all our patients friendly, efficient and effective health care and see this merger as the best way for us to continue to do so.”

committed to maintaining the services at Shannon Court, and all the regular doctors will still be working at Shannon Court.

“Our plan is for this merger to take place on 31st March but then an integration phase lasting a few months as we work to align our systems across the two practices. The formal NHS contract will be held by the Saffron Health Partnership. We have discussed these plans with NHS England and Bedfordshire Clinical Commissioning Group and have been very encouraged by their support.

“Inevitably there will be some changes in the way we work, but we believe these will be for the better. We are committed to offering all our patients friendly, efficient and effective health care and see this merger as the best way for us to continue to do so.”

She added: “We work in a challenging environment where things do go wrong but we are committed to continuously improving our processes and working practices to improve efficiency and delivery of services to our patients.”