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Significant Impact on Services
Innovations in Primary Care (IPC) is a GP federation that was setup to support GP practices across a section of West Sussex.
The practices that are part of our Primary Care Network (a group of GP practices) were advised on Friday that this company was ceasing trading, (https://www.innovationsinprimarycare.com/news/ipc-has-ceased-trading), and that they are liaising with a liquidator advisor as to their next steps.
The closure of this business is having a significant impact on our surgeries (and many others in West Sussex).
In the Bognor Regis locality IPC provided the following services:
- Employment of staff – a large number of staff who provided patient-facing services in our practices were employed by IPC. These include roles such as Clinical Pharmacists, Pharmacy Technicians, and Care Coordinators. A number of these staff live locally in the Bognor Regis area and this is obviously a very distressing time for them. We are providing as much support for them as possible.
- Covid vaccination centre – the IPC teams provided the administrative and clinical services for ensure the vaccination centre that has been running in Bognor Health Centre for the last few years. The management of this centre is being migrated over to another company and the hope is that pre-arranged clinics will continue to operate as expected.
- Patient clinics – IPC provided a wide range of clinics that ran during late afternoon / evenings and weekends. These covered things like wound care, GP clinics, cervical screening. These have all ceased with immediate effect and patients should have been contacted via text message.
- Referral Support Team – a team who were responsible for submitting patient referrals to the relevant hospitals and staffing the referral enquiry line for patients
- Financial services – IPC managed and held the funds for our Primary Care Network. This includes the funds for us to operate, but also to pay providers of other third-party services (i.e. mental health social prescribers, musculoskeletal services).
We are liaising with the Sussex Integrated Care Board to ensure disruption to patient services are at a minimum. Things are going to take time to sort out so we appreciate the understanding of our patients during this challenging time.
Published: Oct 1, 2024