Delay over a ruling on Shropshire GP surgeries
A decision on the future of two GP surgeries is unlikely to be made until "the end of the summer", a medical practice boss has said.
One doctors' surgery at either Clun or Knighton may close following the news that Meadows Medical Practice, which runs both venues and serves about 4,000 patients, has not managed to find a replacement for one of its retiring GPs.
Public consultation over what will happen finished last week.
The four possible courses of action are doing nothing, closing either the Knighton site or Clun site to focus services at just one surgery, keeping both open but with reduced services, or continuing to try to recruit more clinical staff to expand at Knighton.
Doctors at the practice are expected to use the consultation results to make a case for the future to NHS England in the coming week.
Practice manager Hilary Fowles said: "The doctors are now reviewing all the facts of the situation and trying to take account of all of the responses – and we have had a lot of responses.
"Then we have to produce a proposal to submit to NHS England, which we will do in the next few days.
"It will then go before the board and it will be them who make the decision.
"So there is a long way to go yet before we have any light at the end of the tunnel."
She said she hoped NHS England would come back with their own firm proposal by the autumn.
Dr Roger Davies, a senior partner at the practice, is set to retire by the end of the year but despite repeated recruitment efforts no replacement GP had come forward to work at the rural surgeries on the Welsh border.
A public consultation document posted on the practice's website said it had left the partners with "no alternative" but to consider options such as closing a surgery or reducing services at both.
Ludlow MP Philip Dunne has met with all three doctors to talk about the situation.
