A well-liked Lancashire GP will keep her practice’s APMS contract following relentless campaigning by her patients over the past two years.
Lancashire and South Cumbria ICB put Withnell Health Centre’s contract out to a competitive re-tender earlier this year, despite multiple protests by the practice’s patients.
The practice in Chorley has been run by GP partner Dr Ann Robinson for 11 years but her time-limited APMS contract was due to run out in September, and she had to compete again with other potential providers and submit a bid to keep the surgery.
Now the ICB’s primary care commissioning committee has announced that it has accepted the recommendation of a procurement evaluation panel and confirmed Dr Robinson is the successful bidder to provide services at the practice.
The ICB said it will work with Dr Robinson to sign the final contract and, subject to any challenges during what is known as a ‘standstill’ period, the new 10-year APMS contract will be in effect from 1 October.
It comes after patients at the practice raised over £7,000 to pay a professional bid writer to help their Dr Robinson keep her contract.
Dr Robinson told Pulse she was ‘over the moon’ about the result. She said: ‘I found out because Professor Craig Harris from the ICB rang at about 11 o’clock, to tell me the good news and say that our bid had been excellent. And he was very pleased that they’ve made the right decision.
‘And I’m delighted that that’s the outcome. All the patient support has been fantastic, they came out in their hundreds, they came to protest, and they wrote emails and letters and cards and the support was amazing.
‘The financial support that they gave us through the GoFundMe page was huge, they raised a huge amount of money. We used that money to pay for a professional bid writer who supported our practice manager in pulling the bid together.’
She said that no other provided had submitted a bid for the contract during the process. In 2022, Dr Robinson had to compete with another provider, SSP Health, which was initially awarded the contract, but this caused patient protests and the ICB was forced to re-run the procurement process.
‘I find that a little bit frustrating that the staff and the patients had to go through all this process, when really, the right decision should have been made years ago,’ she added.
The ICB’s chief operating officer Professor Craig Harris acknowledged that ‘it has taken some time to reach this point’ but said that the process was carried out ‘as quickly and as fairly as possible’.
He said: ‘I would like to once again take this opportunity to thank everyone involved in the procurement evaluation process, especially the patients of Withnell Health Centre who volunteered to be part of the procurement evaluation panel.
‘I would also like to thank the Withnell patient steering group which has represented the views of patients at Withnell Health Centre with admirable dedication throughout this time, as well as all those who took the time to give their views throughout an extensive public engagement period.
‘While it has taken some time to reach this point, our commitment has at all times been to ensure the process was carried out as quickly and fairly as possible to support the patients of the practice and the staff who work there, and I am confident this has been achieved.’
And nobody will question why the mental health nurse running the ICB created all this anxiety. No pun intended.