Mr Patsy McGlone (Mid Ulster): To ask the Minister of Health, in light of the imminent dispersal of 2,330 patients from Fairhill GP Practice, Magherafelt, to surrounding GP practices in a short time frame, (i) how his Department plans to ensure that adequate financial and workforce resources are provided to receiving practices to safely manage the increased demand; and (ii) given the existing pressures on primary care services and concerns about patient safety, whether additional funding per patient will be allocated to these practices to ensure the safe and sustainable delivery of care. [Priority Written]
Minister of Health: The Department of Health’s Strategic Planning and Performance Group (SPPG) will redistribute the financial resources from the Fairhill Health Centre contract across the 11 receiving practices in proportion to their list increase and in line with General Medical Services regulations.
In addition, SPPG will allocate extra funding to the 11 practices to support the administrative tasks involved in integrating patient records. All new funding will facilitate practices in recruiting and retaining additional clinical, managerial and administrative staff to assist them in this process. The redistribution of the patient list has been managed to ensure that the highest level of increase in patient numbers will be circa 3.2%. Furthermore, to reduce additional workload for these practices, during the first three months of the new arrangement SPPG will put in place a ‘freeze’ on other patients moving practices within the local area.
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