AN ANDOVER medical centre is celebrating reaching the milestone of 10,000 registered patients.

Adelaide Medical Centre on Adelaide Road was at risk of closure, after the Care Quality Commission ranked it ‘requires improvement’ and GPs gave notice “ending their contract to provide services”.

But on September 1 2020, a new merger saw fresh faces take up partnership in the practice, and the facility continued to operate.

Now, twenty months on, the leadership team is celebrating the growth of the practice, from 9,000 patients prior top the takeover, to now 10,000.

Managing partners Dr Philip Heiden and Dr Paul O’Halloran told the Advertiser what this means to the practice’s staff, as well as to the wider Andover community.

Philip said: “The growth is amazing in itself, but it also means patients are finding the care better, and that they must be talking about us in the community as well.

“Our aim was to provide amazing care for the 9,000 we had, but it’s a luxury that we are growing. Growth is good for a variety of reasons, and it is reinvestment back into the practice.”

Paul explained that, prior to the takeover, the number of patients had remained largely unchanged for several years, adding: “That 9,000 is on a background of Andover growing, so effectively it was going down. So we have turned that lack of growth around, and we are already growing faster than Andover.

“When we took over, the main bar was to stay open, but we wanted to make sure that the way we would stay open is to increase quality, otherwise all we were doing was postponing closure.”

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Philip explained that the three main strategies used to meet the milestone were to introduce more effective practices, employing more staff members, and listening to patient priorities.

The larger team has allowed the practice to be “more sustainable”, the partners explained, as well as to offer more specialisms and services.

However, they were clear that, for them, growth must never come at the expense of patient care, but rather the opposite.

Philip said: “We are on one site, and we will remain on one site and grow as much as we can. Through the whole growth we have kept to one vision, and maintained continuity of care. And we have worked on our customer care. We are constantly refreshing and learning.”

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