Three GP surgeries in Carlisle are pushing ahead with merger plans, with a date now firmly set for the shake-up.

As of October 1, the Brunswick House, St Paul’s and North Carlisle practices will officially become a single “super practice”.

Under the new name of Carlisle Healthcare, it will serve a total of 38,000 patients across the city.

However, they are stressing they will remain in their existing surgeries rather than moving into a single building – and patients will still be able to see their GP.

The new practice – which is just awaiting approval from NHS England – will be the biggest in Cumbria.

There will be the equivalent of 16 full-time GPs working across a total of five buildings, including existing satellite surgeries.

Senior doctors say they have taken the decision due to ever-growing challenges meeting the needs of patients, believing that combining resources will benefit everyone.

They last week held an open event for patients to explain how it would work, as well as listening to concerns and suggestions.

Alan Edwards, of St Paul’s Medical Centre, explained that patients often struggle to get an appointment that suits.

“We recognise that for many of our patients it can be very difficult accessing healthcare. We feel it too – at the moment we can’t provide the service we would like to,” he said.

Robert Westgate, of Brunswick House, said this was largely due to problems getting enough GPs, with a shortage of new recruits coming through and many existing doctors approaching retirement age.

“We have got a shortage in the workforce and the traditional approach is not sustainable,” he explained.

Although this is a UK-wide problem, GP numbers across the three Carlisle practices are below the national average.

“As individual practices we are all feeling that in our ability to respond to the demands of the day and rising expectations on GPs and primary care,” added Dr Westgate.

Other practices are feeling similar pressures, with Fusehill Street last week announcing it was ending pre-booked appointments and moving to a same-day only service for patients.

But Brunswick House, St Paul’s and North Carlisle are taking a different approach. They believe that by combining resources and creating one “super practice” they will be able to improve their overall service and make it easier to recruit both GPs and more specialist nurses, physiotherapists and other staff. Previous efforts to advertise joint posts late last year have already proved a success.

From October 1, the plan is to set up a central phone line for the three practices.

Patients will explain their problem to a trained call navigator, who will then help to direct them to the right person.

This means that only those who genuinely need to see a GP will do so, with others being dealt with by nurses or where appropriate, over the phone.

For those who do need to see someone, they can be offered an appointment that day if needed, or booked in when convenient.

They will also have the option of using other surgeries if they wish.

“It’s not the traditional method,” said Dr Edwards.

“There will be more of a discussion between the patient and call navigator, though we recognise that in some cases patients will want to keep the matter private.”

“We also want to ensure that the individual relationship between patient and GP will carry on, keeping some parts of the traditional GP system that work well and changing others.”

Dr Craig Melrose, of North Carlisle, added: “Hopefully this will allow us to provide better quality care.”

Dr Edwards said most people at the public ngagement event either agreed or strongly agreed with the principle of merging and added: “The main concern was whether they would still be able to see their usual doctor and would all the buildings stay open.

“The answer to that is yes.

“We will keep looking at buildings and there may be an opportunity to develop better ones in future but there are no plans to shut any of our buildings. They will be open as normal.”

The NHS Cumbria Clinical Commissioning Group is looking at ways to attract GPs to the area.

Bursaries of £20,000 are now available to trainee GPs and a recruitment fair will take place on June 17 at Redhills, near Penrith, which is being promoted nationally to try and encourage trainee doctors to start their careers in Cumbria.

Health reporter