NHS Somerset CCG has awarded an eight-year contract worth £109m to Care UK to run a ‘health and wellbeing campus’.
The private healthcare provider will jointly run community services at the campus in Shepton Mallet with Somerset Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, which includes a treatment centre, community hospital and a minor injury unit.
Shepton Mallet Project Board chairman Dr Harvey Sampson said that the move would help deliver ‘integrated services to local people closer to home’ such as cataract surgery, hip or knee replacement, endoscopies and MRI.
Somerset Partnership NHS Foundation Trust chief executive Dr Nick Broughton said: ‘We have been working hard with Care UK partners on an innovative solution to providing healthcare that locates on one site a range of NHS community and mental health services.
‘We are also pleased that local community and voluntary health-related organisations have a base on the campus in the years ahead so that we can create a true community hub that responds to the needs of local people.’
There is an option to extend the contract – which goes live in January 2017 – for a further two years.
