Wolverhampton City PCT - Contract Awarded to run New GP Practice in Wolverhampton

February 11, 2009

CONTRACT AWARDED TO RUN NEW

GP PRACTICE IN WOLVERHAMPTON

The final contract in a scheme to provide new GP practices in Wolverhampton was signed by Wolverhampton City Primary Care Trust today, February 11.

Parkfields Wolverhampton Medical Services Ltd will open a new practice in the Ettingshall area of the city. The practice will be initially based in a modular building on the former site of Ettingshall Primary School in Herbert Road and should open in June 2009

The company has been formed by a long-established local GP practice with surgeries at Parkfield Medical Centre, 255 Parkfield Road and Woodcross Health Centre, Woodcross Lane.

Dr Helen Hibbs from Parkfields Wolverhampton Medical Services Ltd, said: “As local GPs we are looking forward to developing this additional new practice which will provide more GPs and improve access to a wide range of primary healthcare services for residents in the local area, in line with the PCT’s strategy of providing care closer to people’s homes.”

The practice – along with new GP practices in Graiseley and Bilston and a GP-led health centre in Low Hill – is being developed under the Government’s equitable access to primary care fund which is investing £25 million into the creation of 22 new GP practices and 17 new GP-led health centres in the West Midlands region.

Once established, the three new GP practices will offer extended opening hours including Saturday mornings with minimum 10 minute appointments. Each practice will develop a patient list of around 6,000 people and will work towards being an accredited training practice for GPs and other healthcare professionals.

The GP-led health centre will provide GP services, offer extended opening hours seven days a week and will provide healthcare both for people registered at the practice and those who are not registered there. It will also provide a walk-in service for people with minor injuries and illnesses that do not need to go to hospital.

Lynne Allen, director of primary care for the PCT, added: “This project is fantastic news for Wolverhampton and means that after months of planning and a complex tendering process we will soon be able to offer additional GP services and GP-led health services in some of the city’s areas of greatest need.

“The investment is the biggest in primary care that the PCT has ever made, and it is being used to target inequality in Wolverhampton. These GPs and healthcare services are additional ones and will not replace existing practices in the area. The new practices and health centre are also enabling the PCT to improve local people’s access to healthcare services ahead of our own £90 million plan for 12 new healthcare developments over the next five years.”

In Wolverhampton, local people were involved in drawing up standards to assess the areas of the city with the greatest need. These standards included the number of babies and children under the age of 15, the number of over 75-year-olds, planned housing developments, the number of nursing and residential care homes; health inequalities, the availability of public transport to health services and the shortage or limited choice of GPs in the area.

Notes to Editor:

The first contracts to run the other two GP practices and the GP-led health centre in Wolverhampton were signed in January 2009. National primary care company Intrahealth, which runs GP practices across the north of England, won the contracts for GP practices in Graiseley and Bilston. It will open the first - at the former Pennfields Health Centre in Upper Zoar Street - in April 2009. Preliminary work has commenced on the second practice which will be based in Bilston.

Wolverhampton Doctors on Call, which provides the city’s GP out-of-hours service, is to run the new GP-led health centre at Showell Park, Low Hill. The centre, which will include a

walk-in service for minor injuries and illnesses, should also open this spring.