9^th January 2025

Dear Patients,

We are excited to share with you some important information regarding the future of Primary Care (GP) services in Buxton.

Towards the end of last year, we were made aware that GTD Healthcare, who own and run Elmwood Medical Centre, had signalled their intentions to step away from the practice.  Whilst we have seen, both directly and indirectly, some of the struggles faced by Elmwood Medical Centre over the past few years, with a negative CQC rating and a shift in patients away from the practice, the news that GTD felt they could take the practice no further still came as somewhat of a surprise.

Following this announcement there were a number of meetings and discussions between GTD, Derby & Derbyshire Integrated Care Board (ICB) and other local stakeholders that would be directly impacted by this news, including ourselves at Stewart Medical Centre.  Everyone involved agreed that this process must be managed carefully to avoid the remaining GP practices in Buxton becoming overwhelmed by an unsupported influx of patients, and a decision that GTD would seek to handover the practice to another provider was made.  What became clear in the discussions with GTD was their desire to ensure long term, high quality care for their patients along with stability and security for its staff.

We strongly feel that we as a practice can have a positive impact on both the patients and staff of Elmwood Medical Centre and as such we presented our case to GTD, and were delighted to hear that we had been chosen as their preferred provider to take the practice on.

The process of taking over the Elmwood Medical Centre is now reaching its conclusion, but there are still a number of statutory responsibilities we must complete, and we continue to work with our colleagues at GTD, Derby & Derbyshire ICB and the CQC, as well as with the staff employed at Elmwood, to finalise the acquisition in the coming weeks.

We are committed to ensuring this transition is as smooth as possible for patients at both Stewart Medical Centre and Elmwood Medical Centre, as well as staff at both sites and we are determined that this will not have a negative impact on our existing patients.  We know the limitations we have at the practice with space and capacity, and our proposal to GTD included taking on the building on Burlington Road as a second, much needed, Stewart Medical Centre site as well as the existing workforce under TUPE employment regulations.  We have also started the recruitment process to add to the combined clinical and administrative workforce across both sites.

Once the takeover of Elmwood Medical Centre is finalised, there will be a short period where we continue to run as two separate practices, before ultimately merging as Stewart Medical Centre a little later in the year.

During this transition period however, we will start to bring the services offered and back room processes in line with each other.

We enter 2025 excited for the future ahead and look forward to welcoming new patients and staff to the Stewart Medical Centre.

On behalf of the Partnership at Stewart Medical Centre.