Parsons Heath Medical PracticeParsons Heath Medical Practice has been having constructive discussions with Colchester Medical Practices about merging our practices.
Colchester Medical Practice, comprising of three practices – Castle Gardens, Wimpole Road and Shrub End Surgery – provide GP services to approximately 25,000 patients living in Colchester.
Adding Parsons Heath Medical Practice to the three existing Surgeries is an excellent geographic fit & will extend our practice area’s coverage to approximately two-thirds of Colchester.
This will mean that many of our patients who may move house within Colchester will be able to remain with us if they wish, which will remove the need for them to find a new surgery, fill in registrations forms and produce ID.
All four of our surgeries will remain open.
Patients will still visit their usual surgery and see their usual team of GPs and nurses.
It will give us the opportunity to streamline back office functions and reduce duplication with the aim of ensuring that as great a proportion of our resource as possible is put into front line clinical services.
This will help us to cope with the ongoing growth of Colchester and all the new patients needing to find a surgery.
We already share the same computer software, which will greatly aid the merger process.
Contingency planning will also be enhanced as if, in a worst case scenario, we were unable to access one of our surgeries, we would have the capacity to relocate doctors and nurses to another of our sites and still continue to see patients with full access to electronic medical records.
The current Parsons Heath management team will be incorporated into the Colchester Medical Practices structure so that we can share our knowledge and expertise.
Similarly, a number of our GPs have special interests in particular areas of medicine which means patients can be cross referred, as appropriate, without the need to visit a hospital.
We are all really excited at the thought of the benefits the merger will bring and we very much want our patients involved in this process. We would welcome any ideas from you as to how you feel we can make this work to the best advantage of all our patients.