25/03/2025
MERGER BETWEEN ORCHARD FAMILY PRACTICE AND PARKWOOD FAMILY PRACTICE
We are writing to inform you of a merger between Orchard Family Practice and Parkwood Family Practice. PLEASE NOTE THAT WE WILL STILL BE SITUATED IN THE RED SUITE, RAINHAM HEALTHY LIVING CENTRE.
Orchard Family Practice is located in the heart of Rainham, based in the Rainham Healthy Living Centre with a practice population of over 5300 patients. Parkwood Family Practice is also based in Rainham with a patient population of approximately 3500 patients. Both practices are members of the Medway Rainham Primary Care Network (PCN). Both practices are having to look at sustainable solutions to continue to offer our patients high quality care and also safeguard the future of primary care in Rainham for the patients of our practices.
Our primary goal in joining forces is to enhance our practices’ capabilities, improve patient care and ensure sustainability and resilience. Our staff teams are central to our success and there are no changes to staffing levels as part of the merger. Patients will continue to see the same familiar faces in our doctors, nurses and support staff.
We hope that by merging the two practices together we can make better use of our staff and resources. Services in both practices will remain operational and uninterrupted, and patients will still be seen at their registered practices but also have an option of being seen at the other site.
We will continue to offer high quality care to our patients and we hope to expand our services including spirometry and phlebotomy as well as looking at other services that we can provide as part of the merger.
The merger would present a unique opportunity to join two high performing local practices, combining our strengths, resources, and expertise to help us become more resilient, safeguard against any future staffing shortages and combine efforts to recruit GPs and other health professionals.
The merger would also provide additional options for sites where our patients can be seen which we believe will allow greater flexibility and enhance patient choice, an example being possible weekend appointments to run Flu clinics.
THERE ARE NO PLANS TO CLOSE EITHER OF THE PRACTICES.
Orchard Family Practice would become the main site and Parkwood Family Practice would be by definition a ‘branch site’ but still be fully operational as it is now. Both sites will retain their websites and phone numbers for now and will adopt very similar ways of working.
The proposed date for this merger is 28th April 2025.
From 25th April 2025 computer systems at Parkwood Family Practice will not be accessible so only emergency appointments will be available.
Please note any medicines due to be prescribed at this time are requested in advance at this site.
We will also aim to identify as many of these patients ourselves and ensure scripts are done earlier especially electronic repeat dispensing ones.
Online services at Parkwood Family Practice will also need to be switched off ie. NHS App, MyGP, eConsult ahead of the merger of the IT systems. If patients try to use them during this time, they will not work and will give an error code. Please do not to contact the practice about this error, as the patient transfer will be in progress.
Online service access for the transferred patients will not be immediately available and may take some additional time to setup, please bear with us during this period.
We will keep you updated if there are any issues and appreciate your support during this process.
We have produced a FAQ sheet available on our websites, but should this not answer any questions you may have, please email us on: orchardfamilypractice@nhs.net.
Dr Pritpal Singh Nanra and Mr Krish Patel (Partners at Orchard Family Practice)
Dr Tamil Selvan (Partner at Parkwood Family Practice)
