Closure of St Mary's Medical Centre in Stamford: Dr Dan Petrie from Lakeside Healthcare faces questions from Stamford Town Council
St Mary’s Medical Centre is ‘not fit for purpose’ according to a doctor who works there - and who believes ‘bigger beasts’ in the health service are to blame for an alternative surgery not having been built.
Dr Dan Petrie spoke at a meeting of Stamford Town Council on Tuesday and answered questions councillors put to him on behalf of residents.
During the hour-long grilling, Dr Petrie, a GP partner at the surgery, defended Lakeside Healthcare’s plan to close St Mary’s Medical Centre on December 1, saying the surgery in Wharf Road was “a lovely, quaint place to work” but “most of the rooms were not fit for people who use sticks, let alone a wheelchair”.
He added the ‘super surgery’ planned by Lakeside was scuppered by North West Anglia Foundation Trust (NWAFT), which owns Stamford Hospital site and runs hospital services in the town.
“The hope was, three to four years ago, that we would be in the position as a business to build a new surgery, but we have not been able to find the land,” he said.
According to Dr Petrie, the hospital trust had offered two plots of land for sale at Stamford Hospital, but only to ‘statutory organisations’. “We are not a statutory organisation, so we were not able to bid for the land,” he said.
“My personal view on the reason NWAFT would not sell us the land is that they see us as competition. The more we can do in primary care, the less people come through their door. That’s a personal view and you would have to ask NWAFT why they didn’t sell the land to us.”
Dr Petrie also said the NHS Lincolnshire Clinical Commissioning Group, which will decide in November whether or not Lakeside can offer patients quality care if St Mary’s closes, was “not particularly helpful in the negotiations”.
Several town councillors outlined the difficulties patients have contacting the GP surgeries by phone, and said online appointments were unsuitable for many.
Dr Petrie said it was “absolutely appropriate” to have face-to-face appointments in some circumstances, but said only five per cent were during the height of Covid, and only 20 to 40 per cent of primary care needs to be carried out at a surgery.
Thanking Dr Petrie for attending the meeting, Mayor of Stamford Bill Turner said the closure of St Mary’s was “making the situation for more than 30,000 patients in this area abysmal”.
Notes from the meeting will be sent to the CCG ahead of its decision on the impact of the surgery closure.
After the meeting, Caroline Walker, chief executive at North West Anglia Foundation Trust, told the Mercury: “When the board agreed the sale of unused areas on the west end of the Stamford and Rutland Hospital site, the trust approached Lakeside giving them every opportunity to purchase the
land.
“In line with Government policy, this land was listed on the Electronic Property Information Mapping Service (ePIMS) website, which allows other public-sector bodies to purchase it. The land was listed on ePIMS last year, however, no bids were made and it then went to the open market.”
