A BRADFORD GP surgery is celebrating being named the best medical practice in the district.

New Otley Road Medical Practice, at Hillside Bridge Health Centre, won the award, organised by City Health, for 2022.

The current management team took over New Otley Road in 2019 after previously working at Barkerend Health Centre.

City Health says the award is to recognise the "excellent work and dedication to patient care" provided by New Otley Road Medical Practice.

Mohammed Shaid, Business and Practice Manager at the centre, said: "It is great to win this award.

"The whole team has worked really hard since we moved here."

Mr Shaid says the centre is always keen to learn from mistakes and patient care is their "top priority".

He added: "We have just listened to patients and improved the services on offer.

"It is nice to have the community we serve.

"It is all about helping people on that patient journey by looking after them.

"We enjoy listening to patients. We do sometimes get things wrong but we learn from our mistakes.

"It is important to engage with our team and patients to what they do and do not like."

The Covid period tested every medical practice across the country.

Many were forced to close and instead only offer video or phone appointments.

At New Otley Road, they were determined to remain open and are now almost back to full capacity.

"We are now at 90 per cent for face-to-face appointments," Mr Shaid said.

"We kept going during Covid and managed well. Demand has been steady ever since.

"We wanted to help as many patients as possible. We offered three approaches; video, telephone or face-to-face.

"We have a really good team of doctors who coped well.

"We always knew we needed to see patients to prevent a backlog."

Vikki Hunt, who is a patient lead for one of the doctors at the centre, Dr Usman Akbar, added: "It is a huge deal for us as it has been a lot of hard work from staff and patients.

"We have a great Patient Participation Group and are very reactive to patient needs.

"I can only attest to the amount of work both Dr Akbar and Mohammed Shaid have put into the success of the practice as a lot of it was clinical.

"I can see the difference we have made to thousands of lives in the area."