Lakeside Healthcare

Lakeside Healthcare based in Corby, Northamptonshire is the biggest General practice in the National Health Service with 62 partners and more than 100,000 patients.

Formation

The original practice, Lakeside Surgery, was one of the largest GP partnerships in England with 47,000 registered patients in 2014, the majority of Corby Clinical Commissioning Group's population, and 22 doctors. The practice managing partner Linda Ward joined as practice manager in 1988 and became managing partner, one of the first non-clinical partners in the country. She helped develop and open Corby Urgent Care Centre. She retired in July 2014.^[1] Professor Robert Harris, former national Director of Strategy at NHS England and NHS National Commissioning Board, was appointed a full-time equity partner of Lakeside Surgeries in July 2014 with plans to roll out its model of an urgent care centre to other areas as well as build the bigger, broader primary care business (see MCP below) ^[2]

Lakeside Healthcare has been appointed by NHS England as one of only 14 Multispecialty Community Providers (MCPs) across the NHS created by the Five Year Forward View which was published in 2014. Its intention is to enlarge the scope of general practice into hospitals, urgent care centres and ambulatory care, employing salaried doctors as well as other healthcare professionals - pharmacists, physcian associates and healthcare assistants as well as different grades of nurses. It will manage some short-stay community care beds and deliver some services in the community which are now operated in hospital outpatient clinics. The strategic plan of Lakeside Healthcare is to be the provider of the majority of care needed by Lakeside patients and also a specialist provider of other services (e.g.urgent care, ophthalmology, dermatology and several other services to a wider group of patients.

It describes itself as a "super-practice" and claims to be offering doctors “well above” the average pay for salaried GPs.^[3]

The new group was formed in July 2015 by the merger of Lakeside Surgeries with Headlands Surgery, Kettering. Initially other local practices that did not fulfill the requirements for full merger were offered 'afiliate' status. However, the preferred operating model is for practices to become fully integrated, sharing a common IT platform, workforce, clinical protocols and corporate governance.^[4] St Mary’s Medical Centre, Sheepmarket Surgery and the Little Surgery in Stamford and Oundle Medical Practice agreed to join the organisation in September 2015.^[5]

The work of the organisation has been welcomed by Jeremy Hunt who was quoted as saying ‘By integrating services and moving more care closer to people’s homes, we can ensure efficient spending and prevent unnecessary trips to hospital for the frail elderly and people with long-term conditions.’

Dr. Peter Wilczynski, formerly chair of Corby Clinical Commissioning Group resigned from that position to become Chair with Prof. Robert Harris becoming Chief Executive Officer of the expanded Lakeside Healthcare Group. The organisation plans to cover 300,000 patients eventually across the East Midlands region.^[6]

The practice applied to move its membership from Corby CCG (where it had 2/3 of the registered population) to Nene CCG in 2015. This plan was not approved because the membership transfer would according to Corby CCG board minutes have destablised that CCG.^[7]

Lakeside Plus

In November 2015 the practice's urgent care company, Lakeside Plus Limited, was appointed by the three Leicestershire CCGs and University Hospitals Leicester to manage and run a "front door" service for the A&E Department at the Leicester Royal Infirmary (LRI) site University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust. The intention is that where patients can use other services, such as primary care, they are directed to them.^[8] LRI is acknowledged to be the busiest A&E department in the country seeing on average over 725 attending patients every day. Lakeside Plus clinicians however already treat well over 200 urgent care patients in every 12-hour shift (pro rated to over 400 patients in a 24-hour period) at the Lakeside Plus flagship Urgent Care Centre in Corby thus making them busier than most hospital A&E departments. Lakeside Plus clinicians had previously been invited into the A&E department of Peterborough & Stamford Hospitals Foundation Trust (December 2014) to assist the trust in coping with winter A&E pressures.

Lakeside Plus has plans to build on its service offer extending its clinical service to include ambulatory care services.

References

External links

• Lakeside Surgery