The partners of Eildon Medical Practice are looking at the future provision of primary care (GP) services to their patients with the co-operation of NHS Borders.
There is now a shortlist of options for consideration, which are summarised below:
Option 1
Status Quo - retain both Newtown St Boswells and Melrose sites as is (no change)
This would involve keeping the Melrose and Newtown sites as they are;
NHS Borders would own the Melrose site and Eildon Medical Practice would own the Newtown St Boswells site.
Please note: This option going forward would not be viable as Eildon Medical Practice have advised that they are going to sell the building, so there would not be a building at Newtown St Boswells to run the practice from. This option will however provide a baseline score for the other options to be considered against.
Option 2
Melrose and Newtown site retained - Newtown site purchased by NHS Borders
This would involve NHS Borders purchasing the Newtown St Boswells site. NHS Borders would then own both the Melrose and Newtown St Boswells sites. Services would continue to be delivered and the planned Melrose site refurbishment would go ahead.
Option 3
The practice sell Newtown St Boswells site and consolidate practice on refurbished existing Melrose site
This would involve Eildon Medical Practice selling the Newtown St Boswells site and all of the services delivered by Eildon Medical Practice and Primary Care Team being consolidated on the Melrose site.
The Melrose building would be refurbished/extended/reconfigured in order to be a sufficient size to accommodate the GP Practice and Primary Care Teams. This could mean a larger extension to the ground floor, full first floor expansion or something else.
Option 4
Sell existing Newtown St Boswells site and rebuild Health Centre in alternative site in Newtown St Boswells whilst also retaining existing Melrose site
This would involve the Eildon Medical Practice selling the Newtown St Boswells building and NHS Borders buying a piece of land somewhere else in Newtown St Boswells and building a replacement surgery.
NHS Borders would still retain the Melrose site and the planned refurbishment would go ahead.
Option 5
Sell both Newtown St Boswells and Melrose sites and build one new Health Centre on a site which serves all practice populations and consolidate all practice patients and partnership working at the new build site
This would involve selling both buildings and finding another suitable brown field site to build a replacement building on, which would consolidate all services onto one site to serve the practice populations / localities.
An update on the outcome of the option appraisal process was presented at the public meeting of NHS Borders' board on 1 November 2018.
The paper, presented by Dr Cliff Sharp, asked the board to support further development of the financial appraisal in order to determine a final preferred option.
As things stand, the preferred options in order are:
- Option 4
- Option 3
- Option 5
Further detailed development work has now commenced, to define more accurate costs per option based on a number of factors including the future scope of services that will be provided by the practice and discussions with Scottish Borders Council about the availability of suitable land to potentially build on in the Newtown area.
The Health & Social Care Partnership is currently working with the GP Partners to maintain the services out of the Newtown surgery for the mid-term.
Detailed development work on the longer term options which arose from the option appraisal process last year will be undertaken in consultation with the Eildon Locality Working Group and the wider community.