Patients group looks for community ownership of GP surgeries

A patients group is hoping to buy two village surgeries and bring them under community ownership, to entice new GPs to the area.

Tina Ranson, who chairs the Brown Clee group in Shropshire, said its current GPs planned to retire over the next few years.

Their replacements would normally be expected to part own the surgeries.

But the group hopes to remove that burden by buying the buildings itself and leasing them to GPs.

They expect the cost to be "hundreds of thousands of pounds", but an exact fee would be set by the NHS.

Mrs Ranson said the patients group was exploring the possibility of grants and donations from charities.

She believes these would be the first community-owned surgeries in England, but said that created its own problems because there was no template for them to work from.

The main surgery in Ditton Priors and the smaller branch surgery in Stottesdon serve about 4,000 patients, with three doctors working between the two sites.

They are in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and Mrs Ranson said: "Any GP is going to be pleased to come and work in such a beautiful area."

But while the Brown Clee Patients Group had a good relationship with its current GPs, she said it could be hard for them to adapt to life in small villages.

She explained: "There is a lot of responsibility and they haven't got such a lot of support from other GPs, they're on their own in the rural communities."

Mrs Ranson said she was aware of many surgeries struggling to recruit new GPs, so they had to work hard to bring them to rural Shropshire.

Members of the patients group are offering perks such as free accommodation to GPs when they first arrive in the area, along with childcare, transport to and from schools, help with their gardening and even free stabling for horses.

They hope that by removing the costs of part-owning the surgeries and having responsibility for their upkeep, new GPs will have another reason to relocate to the area.

Another member of the patients group, Sarah Crawford Thomas, said they needed "to be willing to think outside the box" to keep GP services in their area.

She said people were worried "because there is an older population and the next big practice is in Bridgnorth and you have to travel to it".

She works for the NHS and said she was well aware of the problems surgeries were having in recruiting GPs, but she had been impressed by the response from people in the Brown Clee area.

"The community has been amazing", she said, and the 300 people who attended the last patients group meeting had been "a significant demonstration of how much it means to the community".

Prof Kamila Hawthorne, who chairs the Royal College of GPs, said: "It's always fascinating to hear about practices who are implementing different models of working to alleviate pressures on GPs and deliver care for their patients in a safe and sustainable way."

She said the model of having GPs owning their own practice "provides good value for money", but she accepted "there is no one size fits all model of general practice".

Prof Hawthorne added: "It will be very interesting to learn more about how this community initiative develops and its impact on patient care, staff satisfaction and efficiency of service delivery."

Emma Pyrah, Associate Director of Primary Care for NHS Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin, said her body would "be exploring with Brown Clee Medical Practice all possible options" to keep the service going, after the retirement of the current GPs.

She said it was committed to supporting "sustainable General Practice" and it was "particularly important in our more rural areas".