PATIENTS who can’t get an appointment with their own doctor’s surgery will be able to see another doctor elsewhere under a new scheme launched by local GPs.
The pilot, planned to launch in the summer, is one of the first schemes to emerge from the Alliance Board, a partnership between local GP practices, Worcestershire Health and Care NHS Trust and the County Council.
It would see the six practices in Redditch town centre test out how working together more closely can deliver a ‘Multi-Speciality Community Provider’ model.
Practices will remain very much separate entities and businesses and patients will still be registered to their original practice.
The pilot would potentially involve pooling resources from the six practices and could include Care Navigators ensuring patients are seen by the appropriate professional or other service such as housing or mental health for example.
Other features could include an Acute Illness Unit or ‘Same-day Hub’ to deal with requests for on-the-day consultations, the sharing of expertise across the surgeries and the freeing up of GP time to enable longer consultations for the management of long term conditions.
During a meeting of Redditch and Bromsgrove Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) yesterday (Thursday), doctors praised the initiative as a ‘totally new way of working’.
Simon Trickett, interim chief officer added the pilot would make services much more accessible with urgent access to appointments and would be a ‘big building block’ for the town.
The pilot is planned to launch in the summer and would be subject to patient’s permission to share information between the six surgeries.
