Member Article

Teams Medical Practice in the running for UK's best GP surgery

Teams Medical Practice has been nominated for the General Practice Awards 2018 in the People’s Choice category for the UK’s best GP surgery - and the team needs your vote to win it – voting is open until 10 August 2018.

Located on Watson Street, Gateshead, the practice is proud to continue delivering the very best patient centred care to its 5,500 patients across the NE8 and NE11 post codes.

Senior partner Dr Paul Cassidy, the practice’s longest serving GP with over 30 years’ service, was voted sixth in Health and Cares top 70 stand out stars for the NHS, four places above former Prime Minister Tony Blair, as part of the NHS’s seventieth birthday celebrations.

Dr Cassidy, 58, said: “It was really gratifying, if slightly embarrassing, that an inner-city GP should come above a former Prime Minister, and be in the same list as someone as amazing as Dame Saunders - founder of the modern hospice movement. “Personal care is at the root of everything we do here and to have the patients you have known for so long and colleagues you have worked with support you in this way is humbling.

“I think if the whole practice, both clinical and administrative staff, can now be recognised in the People’s Choice category, for which we are again reliant on support from our patients and colleagues, then that would be something quite special.” Dr Cassidy is an expert on substance abuse and has worked for many years in the Gateshead area delivering targeted care and developing new approaches to an issue that has blighted the lives of many people.

“I was naturally drawn into researching the causes and effects of substance misuse and the resulting healthcare needed to address it, after witnessing firsthand the human cost.”

As a result, Dr Cassidy has worked as a research fellow at Newcastle University and has worked on a World Health Organisation backed project on the subject.

The practice has a clinical team of six GPs, including senior partner Dr Mark Dornan who as the Chair of Newcastle Gateshead CCG holds a key NHS commissioning role and Dr Stephanie Zamoyski who as part of her role teaches medical students, and four clinical nurses all with their own areas of specialism.

Heading up the operation of practice business is Practice Manager Sue Jennings. She has recently helped guide the practice into the Gateshead GP Federation that now serves 204,000 patients as well as joining the federations five strong board.

Ms. Jennings said: “In the face of an ever more challenging healthcare environment we are always looking at new ways to safeguard our core value of patient care and this is done through ensuring a solid financial foundation.

“By linking in with medical specialists such as BW Medical Accountants we can ensure the complexities of operating in the NHS, which is under increasing financial pressure, are addressed and that we perform effectively by taking the best expert advice available to ensure general practice is sustainable for the future. We recently joined the Gateshead GP Federation allowing us to work in partnership with 30 other practices with shared interests, issues and a much wider patient community that will give us more power to negotiate and more room to work to our strengths and specialties.”

Keith Taylor BW Medical Accountants said: “We are delighted that Teams Medical Practice has been nominated in the People’s Choice Award GP Surgery of the Year. Our work with them is to ensure the correct environment to continue the invaluable patient centred work at the heart of everything the dedicated staff at Teams undertake. We urge everyone to vote to give Teams Medical Practice the national recognition it so richly deserves.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by 2B Communications Limited .