Thank you for contacting me about the Burnham and Berrow Medical Centre. I am writing to you now as I previously promised to keep constituents updated with pertinent developments at the practice I’ve been working to resolve constituents’ complaints about the medical centre for around three years, with many pre-dating the pandemic.
However, around eighteen months ago it became clear from the volume of complaints that there was something seriously awry at the practice and I engaged the Somerset Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) to intervene. After a series of attempted interventions – including the employment by the Burnham and Berrow Medical Centre of a leading CCG doctor - it became clear that the practice leadership were unable (or unwilling) to make the full changes needed to meet the required standard. Moreover, as a consequence of the concerns I raised, the CCG asked the Care Quality Commission (CQC) to look at the practice and their initial findings led to a moment of crisis in August when it looked as if the practice would be closed. Mercifully this was avoided through the quick actions of the Integrated Care Board (ICB) – the new name for the CCG - who asked Symphony Healthcare Services to step in and take over the running of the practice.
The transition to Symphony is now complete, with some senior staff from the previous management having left, but most of the staff still remaining under the new management. I’m enormously grateful to the team at Burnham and Berrow Medical Centre for the speed with which they’ve embraced their new management and the appetite they’ve shown for turning the practice around. In the coming weeks, the full CQC report will be published and I’m afraid it will make for grim reading. That’s unsurprising given that we were literally hours away from the CQC forcing the practice to close, but I know their conclusions will cause significant alarm within the community nonetheless. It is important to say, therefore, that the new management has already reviewed the notes of the most at-risk patients and they’ve been invited to come in for check-ups.
The review of the remainder of patient notes is underway and remedial action will be taken where necessary there too. If you are feeling ill, you should of course make contact with the surgery. However, if on reading the CQC report you are concerned that your care has also fallen short – but you aren’t currently unwell – I encourage you to let the new team do their job and trust that they’ll be in touch with you if there’s care outstanding that you need. I will continue to engage with both Symphony and the ICB to make sure the turnaround at Burnham and Berrow is completed as quickly as possible and that the practice returns to a safe way of working immediately. I’m also supporting the practice, Symphony and the ICB in their recruitment of new staff.
I hope you’ll soon see an improvement in the service provided by the practice but please be reassured that an excellent team are now urgently reviewing all patient notes and that shortfalls in care will be rectified as a priority. Please do, however, give them the space to get through this significant amount of work unless, of course, you are feeling ill, in which case you should contact them immediately.
