Lakeside Healthcare

Lakeside Healthcare Group 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 (later run by separate business 'Lakeside Plus Limited', see below). 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 a remit to design and roll out its new models of care across a bigger geography. (see MCP below) [2]

Lakeside Healthcare Group 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, physician 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 Group is to be the provider of the majority of care needed by Lakeside patients and also a specialist provider of other services (e.g.urology, 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 'affiliate' 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 In July 2017, Rushden Medical Centre merged with Lakeside Healthcare Group bringing a further 11,000 patients and 4 further partners.[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 Limited

Lakeside Plus Limited, which is an entirely separately business to Lakeside Healthcare Group with independent management, 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 Limited 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 (building owned by Lakeside Healthcare Group hence the shared name) thus making them busier than most hospital A&E departments. Lakeside Plus Limited 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.

In August 2017 an independent hearing determined that Corby Clinical Commissioning Group had wrongly failed to pay the national NHS tariff rate for services provided since April 2014 and ordered it to increase the rate it was paying for activity by at least 25% and to backdate the increase to 2014.[9]

References

  1. ↑ "Linda retires from Lakeside practice". Northamptonshire Telegraph. 6 July 2014. Retrieved 14 July 2014.
  2. ↑ "NHS England strategy director joins GP and urgent care provider". Health Service Journal. 19 June 2014. Retrieved 14 July 2014.
  3. ↑ "Expanding 'super-practice' wants GPs to work across secondary care". Health Service Journal. 13 May 2015. Retrieved 13 September 2015.
  4. ↑ "Expanding 'super-practice' wants GPs to work across acute care". Local Government Chronicle. 18 May 2015. Retrieved 13 September 2015.
  5. ↑ "Corby and Kettering area GPs merge to create largest practice in NHS". Northants Telegraph. 11 September 2015. Retrieved 13 September 2015.
  6. ↑ "Largest GP practice in the country set to cover 100,000 patients". Pulse. 11 September 2015. Retrieved 13 September 2015.
  7. ↑ "Vanguard 'super practice' bid to switch CCG rejected". Health Service Journal. 3 November 2015. Retrieved 12 December 2015.
  8. ↑ "'Super practice' vanguard appointed to run A&E 'front door'". Health Service Journal. 9 November 2015. Retrieved 13 December 2015.
  9. ↑ "'Serious implications' as CCG ordered to pay full tariff rate to private provider". Health Service Journal. 14 August 2017. Retrieved 3 October 2017.
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