This week there was an article in the Bridgwater Mercury that suggested that the local surgeries had merged together.
This is incorrect.
All local surgeries have worked together for many years – some of you will remember the old out of hours service called BONES, which was us all working together. Since then we have met regularly and worked together on projects. This was called the Bridgwater Bay Health Federation.
Earlier this year there was a national contract change which formalised this level of working. Basically asking all surgeries to work together to help improve the care of patients and services in a local areas – working with social care, the voluntary sector as well as other health providers. Funding is available for the next five years to recruit some shared allied healthcare professionals – like physiotherapists etc.
As mentioned above, we have been doing much of this for many many years and the new emphasis will help reinvigorate this work. However, it is NOT about us joining as one organisation to provide the GP patient care. We very much celebrate good quality GP surgeries at the size and feel that works for patients and practices and we are very lucky to have many excellent practices in the Bridgwater Bay area.