£13m Shrewsbury health centre will open next week
A £13 million primary care centre in Shropshire will open to patients for the first time next week, health bosses revealed today.
The new health facility in Sundorne Road, Shrewsbury, will accommodate Albert Road and Mount Pleasant Medical Centres and serve more than 15,000 patients in the area.
Due to the move, the Albert Road centre will become the Haughmond View Medical Practice.
It will open to its first patients on November 15.
Shropshire County Primary Care Trust said the development had been a top priority for a number of years because of the size and condition of the existing GP surgery buildings.
The three-storey building, which covers a total of 6,700 square metres, includes rooms for GP consulting, GP training, treatments, counselling, phlebotomy, podiatry, audiology and minor operations. It also includes a large pharmacy.
Mary Herbert, practice manager for the Mount Pleasant practice, said: "Our existing premises are too small to have the quantity of services we wanted to provide and about 10 years ago we came up with the idea that we might need to develop the existing practice or look for another site.
"We have always worked closely with Albert Road so it made sense to join forces."
Steve Ellis, Albert Road practice manager, said: "In terms of access and accessibility and size of the rooms and the whole environment this is a massive step forward and gone are the days of our current dark and dingy corridors.
"By working together we are able utilise buying power which means patients get the best of both worlds. We get the best value for money on things like electricity rates while the patients are getting top-of-the range health care in a 21st century building."
Both existing sites will close next week with Mount Pleasant already earmarked to become a children's day care nursery. The Albert Road site is yet to sell.
