FIVE more doctors have been recruited by Wellington Medical Centre as it starts to receive more patients with Friday’s (September 26) closure of the town’s Luson Surgery.

Both Luson GPs Drs Rachel Yates and Adedayo Awodiji will also be joining the medical centre and where possible their existing patients will continue to be registered with them.

The new doctors, who equate to 3.4 full-time posts, will provide an extra 30 ‘sessions’ per week, each of which is just over half a working day at 4 hours and 10 minutes, and more nurses have also been hired.

The medical centre’s patient list will increase by about 40 per cent, made up of its current 16,500 plus 6,500 from Luson.

NHS Somerset said there had been extensive planning between both practices and other local partners, including care homes and community services, to make the change as seamless as possible.

It said the contract notice period was six months, but partners had worked together to make the change happen faster to avoid Luson closing in the peak winter period when demand on NHS services was at its highest.

The medical centre is also looking at the feasibility of converting its former Boots pharmacy for more clinical space to help accommodate the additional patients.

Medical centre GP partner Dr Sally Dimambro said: “We are looking forward to welcoming patients of Luson.

“We have been working closely with NHS Somerset and other local partners to make sure we are ready.

“We are also very pleased to be welcoming Dr Yates and Dr Awodiji from Luson.

“We know them well through our work together during the pandemic and as part of the local primary care network so it is great that they will be joining the team.”

NHS Somerset said the Luson closure had happened despite everybody’s ‘best efforts’ to overcome ‘ongoing resilience and sustainability challenges’ faced by the practice in the previous 12 to 18 months.

A spokesperson said: “In this case, having taken all the relevant advice from specialists, the partners came to the difficult decision to resign their contract.

“NHS Somerset considered the options available to ensure all patients of the practice had continuing access to GP care.

“Re-tendering the contract was considered, but a relatively small list size of 6,600 and ongoing challenges with the outdated premises meant the proposition was unlikely to have been attractive to prospective operators.

“With a low chance of attracting viable bidders, NHS Somerset was unlikely to gain approval to re-tender the contract.

“Moreover, these days, due to the extensive range of services offered by GP practices, larger practices are generally viewed as more sustainable.

“Wellington Medical Centre, a large and well-run practice a short distance from Luson Surgery, was chosen for what the NHS calls a ‘list dispersal’.

“In practice in this case, this means automatically moving the vast majority of Luson’s patients to Wellington Medical Centre, with no action required by patients.”

The medical centre is rated by NHS Somerset as a ‘high performing practice with good standards of patient care and quality’.

It has an average number of appointments per 1,000 head of population per week of 103, significantly higher than the national figure of 70.

The average wait for a non-urgent appointment at the centre is about 2.5 weeks, and 1.67 days for an urgent appointment.

A triage system used by the practice means a doctor reviews all incoming requests for an appointment to decide if an urgent or routine appointment is needed.

In the week ending September 14, the practice provided 1,673 appointments with clinicians, an average of 334 a day, but there were 47 ‘did not attends’, where patient failed to turn up.