NORTH Tawton’s Medical Practice looks set to become a branch surgery, after NHS England announced its recommendations for the service.

In January, Bow Medical Practice signed a one-year contract with NHS England to run North Tawton’s practice from the beginning of April 2014 for one year.

The service operates from the pre-existing North Tawton premises and continues to offer the same services as before.

Bow’s practice stepped in after Wallingbrook Health Group, which previously ran the practice at Devonshire House, announced it would cease providing care at North Tawton on March 31. Wallingbrook stated the decision was made due to insufficient funding from the NHS to run a safe and efficient practice.

NHS England is now looking to secure the practice’s long-term future and sent out a survey document to patients in June asking what services they would like and need at the practice, as a preparation for the allocation of a long-term GP contract at North Tawton.

The survey was the first part of looking at the needs of the community and how to take the practice forward.

Caroline Stead, NHS contracts manager, said: ‘NHS England has recognised the need for a medical practice in North Tawton. We are going down one road to try and secure that, but we will do what it takes to make it happen.

‘The next nearest practice is four miles away.

‘On days where you may not have transport and the kids aren’t well, you can hardly trundle down the country lanes with a pushchair.

‘No other practice boundary covers the whole of North Tawton so there is no alternative service for patients.

‘If we closed North Tawton practice and said to people they need to register elsewhere, there is nowhere else to go.

‘The practice has 2,086 patients. It is small. There are practices in Devon with 30,000 patients.

‘We are seeing that small practices face sustainability issues. If the GP wants a holiday, no-one wants to locum there often due to it being isolated. Lots of GPs are merging services together.

‘It would be really difficult for someone to run North Tawton as a standalone surgery, the number of providers in recent years shows us that.

‘We need to get a period of sustained stability for North Tawton and becoming a branch surgery looks like the best way of doing that.’

Bill Dean, chair of the North Tawton Engagement Group, a group representing the views of patients and facilitating communications between the community and NHS England, said: ‘What NHS England is proposing is in sync with what we want and need here in North Tawton.

‘Caroline has made sure that what we are saying is listened to and has done a great job for us.’

The survey was sent out to all of the practice’s registered patients and it was also available to complete online. Of over 2,000 surveys sent out, 419 were returned, meaning around 20% of those eligible completed the survey.

On the whole, the survey showed that people are generally happy with the current service they are receiving from Bow’s team but would be keen to see extended hours for weekday early mornings, evenings and Saturday mornings.

Other things that proved important to people were access to same-day appointments and the proximity of the surgery to the North Tawton community.

Following the survey, NHS England’s recommendation is to put the practice contract out to tender to other surgeries and organisations to run the practice as a branch surgery — in a similar way to the current set-up with Bow Medical Practice.

This would mean combining forces with another surgery to share services, staff and resources.

The invitations for tender will go out in September with a deadline for submission in October. They will then be evaluated with a formal decision being made before Christmas and the new service will go live by April 1, 2016.