GP Contractor Withdraws Offer To Take Over Medical Practice

A GP contractor has withdrawn its offer to take over Bannview Medical Practice in Portadown, Co Armagh, the Department of Health has confirmed.

Health Minister Michelle O'Neill expressed her disappointment and said no decision has been made to close the practice.

She has asked for an urgent meeting with the Health and Social Care Board (HSCB).

She said: "The HSCB will continue to manage the practice in the interim period until a new contractor is appointed. No decision has been made to close the practice and the HSCB will be writing to all patients to advise them of the current arrangements.

"I am very aware of the challenges facing general practice and I have committed to invest in primary care. The real progress that is being made through increasing GP training place to 111, the ongoing rollout of AskMyGP, the online and phone triage system, and having over 100 practice-based pharmacists in place within general practice shortly, all helps to ease GP workload pressures and attract more doctors into general practice."

Sinn Féin MLA John O'Dowd said: "This news will come as a great disappointment to all those who have worked so hard to secure a new GP provider for Bannview.

"However more importantly it will come as a shock to the patients of Bannview who had expressed such relief that the matter had been resolved.

"It is important to stress even with this latest knock back Bannview is not closing.

"Renewed efforts are already underway to secure a long term resolution. In the meantime the Health Board will manage GP cover at the centre and it will remain open."

Alliance Health spokesperson Paula Bradshaw MLA said: "The Health Minister is fully responsible for the current unacceptable pressures facing GPs and Primary Care centres right across the Region. I am aware that the British Medical Association and Royal College of General Practitioners have been continually raising the grave situation in the Portadown area, in this case with the Bannview Practice, since she came to office. The Health Minister has had eight months to intervene. It appears that her contribution just before Christmas came too little, too late.

"The pantomime politics of the last week, runs totally contrary to the empty pledges that the Health Minister repeated time and again in the Assembly Chamber over the last eight months. She has told the media that the public has 'no faith in the Institutions'. I feel that she has to bear a large burden of blame for the wider populace viewing Stormont as being incapable of providing good government for the people of Northern Ireland. Health is one area of government that should have been prioritised by the current Executive, yet clearly was not."

(CD)