A ‘high-performing’ practice in Cambridge is to be taken over by a private provider after its GP partners handed back their contract due to ‘increasing financial difficulties’.
Earlier this year, East Barnwell Health Centre’s four GP partners were forced to make the ‘devastating’ decision to hand back the contract for their training practice, and told Pulse this was due to ten years of financial struggles.
Now Cambridgeshire and Peterborough ICB has decided to award the contract for the centre to Malling Health, after a ‘robust procurement process’.
The new contract, which was changed from GMS to APMS, will start on 10 October and run for a period of seven years with the option to extend for up to a further three years.
The seven-year APMS contract value is £7,764,179.12, according to a prior information notice published by the ICB, and Pulse was told that this is £40 per patient per year higher than the current partners have been receiving under GMS (£2,184,000 over seven years).
An ICB spokesperson said: ‘We understand how important access to local health and care services is to our communities, and our priority is to ensure that patients continue to have access to GP services and care both now and in the future.
‘NHS Cambridgeshire and Peterborough have now undertaken a robust procurement process to identify a new provider of general practice services at East Barnwell Health Centre.
‘The procurement is now complete and subject to an official standstill period (5-16 September 2024) and there being no objections made, NHS Cambridgeshire and Peterborough intend to award an APMS contract to deliver primary medical services from East Barnwell Health Centre to Malling Health.’
Once the standstill period has passed, formal contracts will be finalised and patients will be sent a letter week commencing 16 September, the ICB added.
The centre’s GP partners, Dr Rachel Harmer, Dr Amine Boualem, Dr Alisdair Macnair and Dr Katherine Mellanby, told Pulse that had ‘timely support been offered’ to them when concerns were raised, this outcome ‘could have been very different’.
They said: ‘We are relieved to have confirmation of the new provider at last. We hope this will give some reassurance to patients and staff regarding the future of the practice, and we will work with Malling Health to ensure a smooth handover on 9 October.
‘This remains deeply painful for us, the four outgoing partners, who had no desire to give up our GMS contract.
‘Had timely support been offered to us when we were repeatedly raising our concerns, this outcome could have been very different.
‘We remain committed to the importance of doctor led, continuity of care in general practice, particularly in deprived communities like ours, and we fully support our GP colleagues as they raise awareness locally and nationally.’
After they announced the contract hand-back, the partners told Pulse that the practice was ‘not failing in any sense of the word’.
They said: ‘Our health centre is a thriving and successful training and teaching practice, with high patient satisfaction embedded in our local community.
‘We are immensely proud of the service we provide to a deprived population within a very wealthy city. And yet these compounding financial challenges have rendered us unable to continue, which for us is utterly tragic.’
Malling Health told Pulse it will not be able to comment on the takeover until later in the month.
Malling Health runs GP surgeries, urgent care centres and one out-of-hours service, according to the CQC, primarily in the Midlands, Cambridgeshire and Greenwich.
Last year, another surgery in Cambridge was taken over by Malling Health after the ICB found a last-minute solution to keep it open.
Priors Field Surgery, in the then health secretary Steve Barclay’s constituency, was initially set to close following the retirement of the GP partners who held the contract, but Mr Barclay urged the ICB to draw up plans for an alternative solution to GP services in the area.
Funny how they ( Government, ICBs ) can find extra money for privatisation and ‘last-minute solutions’ for privatisations.
Ironically, perversely, will the GPs at East Barnwell (who handed back contracts) get jobs at Malling or other private companies now? ( for even more money than they earned before perhaps? ) That could be another interesting Pulse news item, couldn’t it. Does not sound like good continuity of care does it.
Will standards suffer? Labour and Sir Keir Starmer will have to do better to improve to improve the NHS and GP practices, and improve the standards and continuity of NHS GP practices: or end up with yet more unnecessary and expensive GP changes to privatisation that patients do not really want: and the tax-payers do not want, either. Yes doctors and nurses too, pay taxes.
Can these partners not take legal action against the ICB for such nonsense?
My heart goes out to these partners and I can really feel there pain. It’s so difficult to resign your partnership when you don’t want to but have to.
As for these contracts – they are all short term. In 7 years, it will go out to procurement again, with likely far less money.
Our practice was meant to be only a 3-year APMS contract but Covid hit and it was extended by 1+1. We have had 2 failed procurements since and now it’s out for bidders again. We all love our current employer but we are told a direct award of a non standard GP contract is not possible.
And like this practice, we are deprived (and multi-cultural)
It really makes you weep.
One of the ‘successes’ of brexit is that we don’t have to follow EU procurement rules which are the only thing ‘preventing’ direct awards of contracts …
..but maybe its more the centrally mandated sell out/off of General Practice?
Appalling decision. To hand it to Malling. Doesn’t make any financial sense, does it? To convert a cheaper GMS contract to the more expensive treatment of an APMS contract, and lose continuity and goodwill in the bargain. But makes political sense if you’re after marketising GP contracts. Nobody’s against markets, but in the private sector where they belong.
Sad to see the mercantile tradition of the “nation of shopkeepers” being sold out, and primary care geared up for trade deals with irresponsible USA corporates.