WARRINGTON’S town centre GP health centre is to close from the end of July – to save money.
A review of the centre, on Sankey Street, has concluded that it is not feasible to keep it open, bearing in mind the small number of patients who use it.
Kathy Doran, chief executive of Cheshire, Warrington and Wirral PCT Cluster said “In order to ensure that any decision taken was informed by the views of patients in Warrington, we spent some time talking to people using the GP Health Centre to find out how they felt about the service.
“Clearly the service is valued by those who use it, however, given the fact that Warrington has capacity in other GP practices and the cost of this service is substantially more than what is affordable, it’s simply not feasible to keep this facility open for the small number of patients who use it”
The consultation finished in January and the findings were presented to the NHS Cheshire, Warrington and Wirral Cluster board for consideration.
After much discussion and debate the Board decided to decommission the service.
NHS Warrington has agreed in partnership with Halton Health, the service provider, that the Warrington GP Health Centre will close to patients and the public on July 31.
All registered patients have been sent formal notification of this decision and advice on registering with a GP close to where they live.
A Freephone number is also in place for people who may require additional support.
NHS Warrington is currently working closely with Halton Health to ensure that the closure of Warrington GP Health Centre provides minimal disruption to patients.
Health chiefs say there is more than enough capacity in Warrington for all the patients to find a suitable high quality alternative GP practice.
NHS Warrington is putting in place alternative provision for other users of the service, such as homeless people.
More information is available on 0800 051 0466
Health centre closure will save money
22 Comments
Share.
About Author
Gary Skentelbery
Experienced journalist for more than 40 years. Managing Director of magazine publishing group with three in-house titles and on-line daily newspaper for Warrington. Experienced writer, photographer, PR consultant and media expert having written for local, regional and national newspapers. Specialties: PR, media, social networking, photographer, networking, advertising, sales, media crisis management. Chair of Warrington Healthwatch Director Warrington Chamber of Commerce Patron Tim Parry Johnathan Ball Foundation for Peace. Trustee Warrington Disability Partnership. Former Chairman of Warrington Town FC.
2 Comments
This is exactly why the NHS is completely out of touch with the public. This facility is being closed simply to save money. If there is capacity to deal with the patients using this facility why was is opened and money wasted in the first place? The people making these decisions are completely out of touch and yet nothing is done to redress these bad decisions. They just carry on wasting OUR money! I wionder how many people new that this facility was there and, if so, what its use was? Perhaps the powers that be should have told us and more useage may have been made of it
Quote “Health chiefs say there is more than enough capacity in Warrington for all the patients to find a suitable high quality alternative GP practice.” Really??? Perhaps Health chiefs might like to telephone all of Warrington’s GP practices early one morning to try to book an appointment. Lines are said to open around 8;30am but there is usually a continual ‘engaged’ tone until after at least 9;00am – when it is most likely one will be told that “all appointments are booked for the next two weeks – and as appointments can’t be booked more than two weeks in advance – ring back in a couple of days” A couple of days later, the same will happen.