I am delighted that the uncertainty around the GP service in Reeth and Swaledale has been resolved.
The signing of a five-year lease between the South Tees NHS Foundation Trust and the owners of the surgery building in Reeth has enabled the retention of a family doctor service in the dale – when at one point it looked like it would be lost.
The first I heard there was a problem was when Dr Mike Brookes, who with his wife Marie, the practice manager, had served the area for many years, announced they were retiring.
In a social media statement just before the Easter weekend, the Brookes’ Reeth Medical Centre post said that because nobody had been found to take on the contract to provide the service in the area, the Centre would close at the end of May.
Cue a degree of panic in the dale – and understandably so. After years of being looked after the much-loved and respected Mike and Marie, in less than eight weeks’ time patients were faced with the loss of the service and having to travel to Hawes, Aysgarth, Leyburn or Richmond to see a GP.
My inbox quickly filled up. Like me, people wanted to know how this situation had arisen at what was, effectively, the eleventh hour. My first priority as MP was to establish exactly what the situation was and how we had got there.
What emerged in written correspondence and meetings with NHS Humber and North Yorkshire Integrated Care Board (ICB) – that’s the bit of the NHS responsible for providing GP services in our area – was an apparent willingness to let the Reeth centre close and farm patients out to adjacent practices.
They told me they had made extensive efforts to find a replacement doctor willing to take the contract on but had been unable to do so.
Explaining to the ICB – based in Hull – that the geography of our area made that an unacceptable solution, I told them to think again.
Within days, publicity about the situation led to three enquiries to my office from GP concerns interested in the contract. There were clearly people interested in providing the service.
However, there were reasons why some of these interested parties might not have been the best option for the specific circumstances at Reeth.
It was at this point that a local solution involving the Hawes-based Central Dales Practice and the Richmondshire Primary Care Network – all the other GP practices in the area – came together.
I urged the ICB to work with this alliance and I am pleased to say that the result is the arrangement we have now with the Central Dales Practice operating Reeth as a branch surgery.
I welcome the involvement of the South Tees Trust and the Richmondshire practices. There will be a real opportunity to improve the range of services in Reeth and to ‘join-up’ care for patients.
I want to thank all the parties involved, particularly Lynn Irwin, managing partner at the Central Dales Practice, for their hard work and Cllr Yvonne Peacock, the local North Yorkshire Council representative, and the local parish councils for their work behind the scenes.
Lastly, I also thank every local person who wrote to me to outline their concerns and fears about what might have happened.
Happily, we have a solution that is far better than the apparent fait accompli we faced just a couple of months ago.
