St Mary's Medical Centre in Stamford to be closed by Lakeside Healthcare on December 1
When Lakeside Healthcare announced on Tuesday (September 15) that it is closing St Mary’s Medical Centre in Stamford, concerns were immediately raised about the care the surgery's 15,000 patients will receive. Here we look at the problems patients fear they will face, and some the issues which have caused the current situation.
The closure of St Mary's Medical Centre on December 1, which was announced this week, will mean its patients will transfer to the Sheepmarket Surgery, off Ryhall Road, bringing its total number of patients to more than 30,000.
Following the announcement, the patient participation group representing those registered with St Mary's Medical Centre in Wharf Road, and with the Sheepmarket Surgery off Ryhall Road, raised specific concerns.
These included inadequate phone systems for people contacting the surgeries, a lack of parking spaces at the Sheepmarket Surgery, long queues for prescriptions which will leave people waiting outside in winter, and the 'suddenness' of the closure - particularly when the lease at St Mary's was not due to expire until 2025.
According to Lakeside Healthcare, the lease on the St Mary's site was unable to be extended beyond December.
Dr Tom Eames, GP partner at Lakeside Healthcare Stamford, said: “There is no alternative to the closure as currently there is no possibility of the lease on St Mary’s Medical Centre being extended and there are no other viable locations to provide primary care services in Stamford, despite us looking elsewhere and exploring several possibilities with other organisations."
However, one of the leaseholders for St Mary's Medical Centre - a GP who has retired from the surgery - said Lakeside Healthcare took the decision to cut the lease short. It had been due to expire in December 2025. He said they did not mind if Lakeside changed its mind, and would continue to let the lease continue on the existing terms.
Dr Eames also sought to reassure patients that “safe and effective care" will remain a priority throughout the change and beyond. He added: "There will be no reduction in service to Lakeside patients."
An online survey has been made available by Lakeside Healthcare at www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/stmarysclosure
What is Lakeside Healthcare?
Lakeside Healthcare Stamford is part of a larger organisation based in Corby, Lakeside Healthcare Primary Care Network. It also delivers primary care in Bourne, Oundle, Kettering, areas of Peterborough and St Neots in Cambridgeshire.
Primary care providers are independent businesses contracted to the NHS by the local clinical commissioning group (CCG).
Lakeside Healthcare has a patient participation group to aid communication between the practice to its patients.
Expansion plans at Sheepmarket Surgery have been left in deadlock
Expanding GP services has been discussed by Lakeside Healthcare and North West Anglia Foundation Trust, which runs Stamford Hospital, for the past four years.
Lakeside said it had hoped to purchase land at the Sheepmarket site from Stamford Hospital to expand the existing GP surgery building.
In a written response to the patient participation group, Lakeside Healthcare stated: “Ultimately, North West Anglia Foundation Trust was not willing to accommodate Lakeside’s wishes and would not sell us what we wanted, despite previous offers from them to do exactly this.”
Lakeside added that the termination of St Mary’s lease two years ago was necessary because the NHS clinical commissioning group would not fund both St Mary’s and a new surgery and “external professional advice” said there was time during the notice period to expand Sheepmarket.
“Only after the date at which we could serve notice on the St Mary’s Medical Centre landlords did it transpire that ultimately North West Anglia Foundation Trust were not willing to reach terms with us regarding the sale of land, leaving us in the position we are now,” it added.
Caroline Walker, chief executive at North West Anglia NHS Foundation Trust, said: “We have had a number of meetings to discuss the future of Lakeside and how the trust can support primary care provision. This has included having structural plans drawn up with various different proposals to facilitate the expansion of the Sheepmarket Surgery, which the trust funded.
“However, Lakeside did not accept any of our proposals as viable.”
Lakeside has also been in discussion about alternative sites with South Kesteven District Council, and landowners such as Burghley Estates and Larkfleet Homes, but says no third-party landowner has offered it any land on which to build a new clinic.
Landlord of surgery site says: 'There is an alternative to closing'
St Mary’s Medical Centre was built in Wharf Road in 1989, allowing the surgery at 23-24 St Mary’s Street to relocate to purpose-built premises.
At the time, doctors Gavin Kelly and John Boulton became landlords for the site, and now they lease it to Lakeside Healthcare.
Dr Kelly, who retired in 2008, said: “We’re not out to make life difficult; we want to be helpful. I’m concerned for the provision of primary care in Stamford. Not only am I a user of the service, but I’ve devoted 30 years of my professional life to it.”
He disagreed with the suggestion from Lakeside Healthcare that there was ‘no alternative to closure’.
Dr Kelly said: “That is not the case. The decision to leave was taken by Lakeside totally on their own. They exercised their right to use a break-out clause and then contacted us to extend the lease a little bit longer.”
He added that he and Dr Boulton, who left Stamford to practise in Cornwall, continued to be happy for Lakeside Healthcare to stay at St Mary’s Medical Centre under the same lease agreement terms. “There has been no rent increase since 2010,” he said.
Instead Lakeside Healthcare set in motion a two-year break out clause in December 2018, bringing forward the end date of the lease to December 17, 2020. The lease had been due to expire in December 2025.
“We were quite happy for them to stay on for as long as it takes,” said Dr Kelly. “So, there is an alternative to closing. The building is safe to work in; it’s purpose built. We are happy for them to extend the lease.”
He said he felt providing a service for 30,000 patients at Sheepmarket Surgery would be “challenging to put it mildly”.
“I appreciate they’re not doing as many face-to-face consultations at the moment, but they can’t continue in that way indefinitely. It’s not satisfactory.”
Dr Kelly said he was currently unsure of what he and Dr Boulton would do with the St Mary’s Medical Centre site from December.
Lakeside Healthcare says: 'Extending lease is not an option'
While the landlords of the St Mary’s Medical Centre site say they are happy for it to continue to be leased under the existing terms, Lakeside Healthcare claims this is ‘not an option’.
The cost of leasing and maintaining St Mary’s Medical Centre is about £70,000 annually, a bill which is picked up by the NHS South West Lincolnshire Clinical Commissioning Group.
Dr Tom Eames, GP partner at Lakeside Healthcare Stamford, said: “Unfortunately we’re unable to extend the lease on the building. From our point of view it was not an option.
“With everything there are different sides to the story and there are commercial sensitivities but it is very much infeasible.”
He denied that ending the lease in December was a cost saving measure.
“The clinical commissioning group pays the running costs of the building and it will be saving £70,000 a year, but providing the healthcare will cost more for us.
“We completely understand that our patients’ participation group would have concerns and questions but we have undertaken a feasibility study and impact study and we are confident that we can deliver a good service from the Sheepmarket Surgery.
“There will be no redundancies and we value our staff immensely. And as GPs who live in the area, we all feel strongly about Stamford and patient care.”
Dr Eames said Covid-19 had meant most GP surgeries had changed their methods of consultation, but added: “We still have the same group of GPs looking after the same patients.”
He added that extending facilities at Sheepmarket Surgery, which is next to Stamford Hospital, had been explored, but had so far failed.
“We have been focused for some time on the options for extending at the Sheepmarket Surgery but our options have been sidelined, not by our own volition and we are extremely frustrated by this.
“Our plans for the future have not gone away. We will always be looking at the options we have to extend, and to deliver and build on services for the patients of Stamford.”
Dr Eames said Lakeside Healthcare was exploring adding extra car parking at Sheepmarket Surgery, and at improving the telephone system for the surgeries.
“We are working with our telephone providers to update and rectify some of the problems,” he said.
“We’re encouraging those patients who can to access our services through E-consult via our website.
“People are still talking to our medical staff based in Stamford using the video consultation, and increasing numbers of people are using it and have found it very useful.
“We are getting back to people in a quick fashion and we are dealing with their queries straight away.
“We know that won’t be appropriate for every patient, and we have been seeing people face-to-face all the way through Covid and will continue to do so. People who need to see a doctor are being seen.”
Reactions to the announced closure of the surgery
Andrew Nebel MBE, chairman of the patients' group, said: "I don't see how people living on the western side of town can drive to the Sheepmarket Surgery and find somewhere to park.
"There are not enough spaces on the site and alternative parking, such as at Morrisons supermarket, is too far for people who are frail, or those who are elderly and may struggle to walk that distance."
He added Lakeside Healthcare had sprung the announcement on patients only two-and-a-half months before the surgery is due to close, and as a result this did not leave enough time for good plans to be put in place.
"It's like they're jumping out of a plane and trying to knit a parachute on the way down," he said.
Reader Teresa Jude, a patient, said she had received a text to inform her of the closure.
She said: “I and many others are struggling to receive a good service from the Sheepmarket surgery. It can take an hour to get through on the phone and throughout the summer there have been long queues outside the surgery to get prescriptions, with a very slow service.
“I have today responded to Lakeside to say they are providing a very poor service to patients and carers. Many of those who are suffering are the elderly who don’t have computers and don’t like to make a fuss.”
On Twitter, David (@RealSplinterUK) said: “Time to switch GPs I guess. Only reason I stayed with St Mary’s when it merged into Lakeside Healthcare was because of the great doctors there. Even though those doctors may be at the practice near the hospital now, it is just going to make call waiting times, etc. even worse.”
Geoff Green (@geoffpgreen), also on Twitter, called the closure an “absolute disgrace”.
He said: “We were assured no impact when the Little Surgery closed, and since then it takes two hours to get prescriptions and 6+ weeks for appointments. Consolidating these services will result in 30k patients in one location and more delays.”
He added: “Everyone in the community will now struggle even further with face-to-face GP appointments, access to services, parking, congestion, funding, connectivity, etc.”
Gary Brown (@GaryBro79870837) echoed the disappointment, adding: “I shall be looking for a surgery elsewhere as you won’t get an appointment in months now.”
Nearly 100 readers on Facebook also reacted. Sharon Jeffries said: “So if the lease doesn’t expire till 2025, why can’t it stay open till then? Loads of improvements are needed before you can shut this practice down. The phone lines are dreadful now. It’s going to be worse once St Mary’s closes. It needs dealing with ASAP.”
Julie Beech added: “One surgery, that already gives appalling service, for a whole town that is expanding.madness!”
Charlie Louth queried: “How on Earth are they going to accommodate all the doctors in one premises?”
And Andy Russell said: “Since Lakeside, our once-good service has deteriorated drastically. The Covid problem was a gift to Lakeside. It is what they wanted, telephone/online appointments and moving all to hospital site. Very bad organisation. The patients seem to be an afterthought. So sad and pathetic.”
What do you think? E-mail your views to smeditor@stamfordmercury.co.uk
