Merger Latest: End of Engagement Programme and Next Steps

Our public engagement programme supporting the proposed merger of Gosforth Memorial and Jesmond Health Partnership has now finished.

Thank you to everyone who took the time to share their views with us. More than 250 of you completed feedback forms, and a further 70 attended our three drop-in events during December and January.

Hearing your views is important. While putting together the merger proposal, we looked at all possible impacts on patients and shaped our communications and FAQs to try to proactively answer as many of your questions or concerns as possible.

Hearing your views helps us to check that nothing has been missed. We appreciate all the comments, questions and constructive criticism we received.

While the deadline for your feedback to be included in our merger application has now passed, we will leave the online form open, and patients are welcome to continue to share their thoughts or ask questions.

Next Steps

We will now analyse all of the feedback we received and put it into an engagement report. We will share our findings with patients in the coming days.

The engagement report is a requirement of our wider merger application to the North East and North Cumbria Integrated Care Board.

The full application will include all of the technical details about how we propose to run the combined practice, the merging of the two practice contracts into one under a new partnership, and reassurances that there will be no reduction in any of our existing services.

We will submit the application before the end of this month, with an expected outcome before the end of February.

In the meantime, we will continue to work with staff teams at both practices on the finer details of how a new combined practice can deliver the high-quality primary care services patients deserve.

Finally, a reminder to all patients at both practices that you should continue to access healthcare as you currently do.

We will update patients on what happens next and the progress of the merger application. Both practices will remain as separate entities until further notice.