A super-practice in Birmingham is expanding to cover a population of up to 370,000 patients, making it the largest GP partnership in England.
The Our Health Partnership in Birmingham and Sutton Coldfield will be expanding to include nine more practices in the Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin area from May.
When the new practices join the partnership, OHP will have more than 200 partners at 42 practices and cover between 285,000 and 370,000 patients.
Like the other practices, the GPs will be able to hold on to their current contracts after joining the partnership.
The partnership is also in talks with NHS Shropshire CCG about collaborating on primary care development in the region.
Dr Mark Newbold, who describes OHP as the ‘largest GP partnership in the NHS’ on his University of Birmingham profile, is leading the partnership.
Dr Robert Morley, executive secretary of Birmingham LMC, was supportive of the super-partnership’s expansion, which he said is ‘the only way that GP-led general practice can remain viable’.
He said: ‘GPs now have no choice but to urgently adapt in order to survive and look for ways of preserving all the strengths of traditional general practice but within business models that allow them not just to survive, but to explore means to prosper within the increasingly hostile environment in which they have been deliberately placed.’
Dr Newbold declined to comment
