New arrangements for Carden Medical Centre

Wed 2 Oct 2019

New arrangements are set to be put in place to manage Carden Medical Centre.

The GP practice partners have notified Aberdeen City Health & Social Care Partnership (ACHSCP) of their intention to cease their contract with NHS Grampian.

The Carden Place practice provides General Medical Services for some 9,000 registered patients but there is no need for patients to worry or to change their practice.

The Partnership will now make efforts to discover whether any other practice is interested in taking on the Carden practice. If not, the practice will be transferred to NHS Grampian and it will then be directly managed by the Health & Social Care Partnership.

ACHSCP Chief Officer Sandra Ross said: “The most important thing to stress is that patients have no need to worry and do not need to do anything. We are working closely with the Carden doctors and the wider Carden practice team, and services will continue as usual during this time of transition.

“This will be an opportunity to reshape services to make sure they meet the needs of the local community for the future. Health and social care integration, and the development of our localities, provides an excellent basis from which to look at how we ensure the long-term development and sustainability of services. We will maximise this opportunity and consider different approaches and models for service delivery, based on patient needs.

“All practice staff have been informed of the situation and letters have gone out to Carden’s patients. Practice staff, patients and stakeholders will continue to receive communications at each stage of this transition process.”

Carden practice manager Shona Alexander said: "As with many other practices, Carden has a mixture of salaried GPs, locums and GP Partners who own the business. One partner is moving on from Carden for career reasons and the remaining two partners have taken the decision to work with the Partnership to look at different ways of working to secure the future of the practice. We are pleased to have the opportunity to plan with them.

“We want to reassure our patients that our services will continue as normal throughout and our staff remain available to deal with all primary care needs."

Patients who have queries can email nhsg.cardenadvice@nhs.net or telephone our helpline on 01224 551000.