HEALTH chiefs say they are “still in negotiations” in an attempt to save a surgery that has thousands of patients.

But a huge turnout of people at a meeting in Keighley received a stark warning that there is no easy path towards retaining the town’s North Street Surgery.

At least 150 people attended the session in Central Hall, Alice Street, to try and learn what will happen to their surgery when the contract to operate it expires at the end of this month.

The surgery, which caters for more than 6,700 patients and also includes a small satellite facility in Vale Street, Stockbridge, is currently run by Westcliffe Care UK. But Westcliffe has confirmed it will not be able to renew its involvement with the surgery after November 30.

Responding to questions at the heated meeting, Dr David Black, medical director of NHS England Yorkshire and Humber, said the contract to run North Street Surgery had been put out to tender twice, but no one had come forward.

He told the gathering he wanted to be as honest as possible about what could happen, and said alternative models to ensure GP practices could be made viable were still not ready. He said: “We’re still in negotiations about whether we can find some doctors willing to provide a service similar to what there is now. But if we can’t find them we’ll have little choice other than to register you with other practices. That is a fall-back position and it’s not something we want to do. We know this’ll raise really strong emotions. It’s become clear that the amount of money we have is an issue. We’ve found some extra money to support the service, but there’s a limit to how much we can find. It’s extremely unlikely we’ll be able to find doctors who’ll want to continue running a service from Vale Street. The best we can hope for is to continue getting a service out of North Street, but not from Vale Street.”

Earlier in the meeting, Julie Winterbottom, managing partner at Westcliffe Care UK, stressed that even though her organisation had only taken North Street Surgery on for a 12-month contract, it had previously wanted to renew it. She said earlier perceptions that the surgery was “failing” and had a “poor reputation” turned out to be untrue. But she noted that it has proved expensive to run, as it has been difficult to recruit enough permanent GPs to staff the surgery.

She said the fact that the service is based in two old buildings also makes it costly to operate. We had to take the decision that we wouldn’t continue with the contract,” she said. “It’s a decision we made with our heads, not with our hearts, because we don’t want to have to leave the patients and staff.”

Members of the public at the meeting asked how Keighley’s other surgeries could accommodate them when these surgeries are already full. One man told Dr Black: “I don’t care about your models or your financial situation. Would you stop looking at models and actually look at us as people?”

The meeting was chaired by Keighley town councillor Kaneez Akthar and was also addressed by Keighley Central councillors Zafar Ali and Abid Hussain. Cllr Hussain said the NHS must extend the amount of time available for organisations to come forward.

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