Protest is held over Shrewsbury GP closure

Thursday's protest came after it was announced last month that the Whitehall Medical Practice in Monkmoor is to close at the end of September.

Shropshire CCG has tried unsuccessfully to find a new provider to run the GP services at the Monkmoor Road practice. The current operator, Malling Health, will cease to provide the service when its contract ends.

But many of the surgery’s 3,700 patients claim they only found out about the closure via the media and hundreds are still desperately trying to find an alternative surgery.

A petition has been launched and has attracted 1,500 signatures.

Dennis Cheese,one of the clinic's patients, helped to organise the protest. He said: "We have heard that if we put pressure on the CCG they may cave in. They have not handled the process properly. We have gone to a scrutiny committee and the health watchdog is looking in to this ad well as the health overview scrutiny committee.

"It has been handled appallingly. A lot of the patients still have not received letters about the closure. The CCG have not communicated with anybody on this, although I have met with Nicky Wilde, director of Primary Care at the CCG.

"They keep telling us that when it closes we will be able to find a place at another surgery in the area. But registration is done by postcode and the two surgeries for this area, Belvidere and Marsden are too small.

Slogans

"People are getting so worried they are queuing outside the practice before the doors open as they are desperate to register. I know a lady in her 80s who uses a mobility scooter who is scared to death about where she will go. The CCG just does not seem to care.

"They do not seem to want to look into finding a new provider and the easiest option is just to close the surgery."

Protesters wore yellow T-shirts and white T-shirts printed with slogans. Also present at the protest was Defend our NHS spokeswoman Gill George and town councillors and former Shrewsbury mayor Miles Kenny.

Nicky Wilde said: “The contract was ending, no-one submitted a bid for the new contract, therefore with no GPs, nurses or practice staff to continue to run Whitehall Medical Practice there was no other option but to unfortunately close the practice.

“The registered patient list at Whitehall Medical Practice is around 3,700, with approximately 700 patients living within walking distance in the local wards of Abbey and Underwood, and around 250 living outside the county town of Shrewsbury.

"The remaining patients live across the county town and not in the immediate vicinity of the practice. There are six practices within a 1.5 mile radius of Whitehall Medical Practice and they all have the ability to register new patients.

“All practices in Shropshire, which are rated a minimum of ‘Good’ by the Care Quality Commission, have open lists and are accepting patients. There has been some confusion around numbers being accepted and this is around the actual quantity of applications that are processed each day, not the number of applications received to register at a new practice."