A North Tyneside GPs practice has been granted permission to close its patient list for six months as it struggles to cope with staffing levels and issues with its premises.
Beaumont Park surgery located on Hepscott Drive, Whitley Bay, has seen a 50% reduction in full time GPs and has also seen a reduction in nurse practitioners. Locums are in place to help but they cannot perform all GP services.
The surgery currently serves 6,848 patients and partners asked the North Tyneside CCG Primary Care Commission for permission to no longer take on new patients to allow the surgery to recover.
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North Tyneside council’s adult social care, health and wellbeing sub-committee was told the building in which the surgery practices is no longer fit for purpose. A report into the surgery’s plight was delivered to the sub-committee and concluded there were serious issues with the building.
It states: “The premises are 70% undersized and are no longer fit for purpose or in line with current NHS design or space standards and are prohibitive to service delivery to the patients. The building layout is detrimental to confidentiality and there are access issues such as doors not able to accommodate wheelchairs or pushchairs.”
The report also claims the state of the building may make it difficult to recruit staff as there are numerous surgeries with better facilities.
Earlier in the year, it was hoped the surgery could relocate to vacant land on Newsteads Drive. However, after a public consultation generated 42 objections the council refused to sell the land to the surgery.
Coun Linda Arkley for Cullercoats, who worked at the surgery 15 years prior, said: “46 people, I mean that's a drop in the ocean, it’s nothing, and you’ve got around 7,000 patients. I find that totally unacceptable, I really do. It doesn't add up to me one jot.
“From that people are not going to have care and people are not going to be able to apply to that practice to go in there. Of those people, where will they go and what is the care option for those residents?
“We can’t be saying how wonderful we are as a council and health service if this is what we are actually offering.”
Chair of the sub-committee, coun Joe Kirwin, told councillors deputy mayor Carl Johnson is talking to the surgery to figure out alternative solutions.
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