A merger between two doctors’ surgeries was approved by Brighton and Hove health bosses.
Matlock Road Surgery, run by Dr Paul Allan, will merge with the Beaconsfield Medical Practice, in Preston Road, Brighton, in March next year.
The move was given the rubber stamp by the Brighton and Hove Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) Primary Care Commissioning Committee at Hove Town Hall this afternoon (Tuesday 3 September).
The discussion was a late addition to the committee’s main agenda meeting after a patient’s complaint about lack of transparency.
It had previously been included in the “part 2” private session due to the financial elements of the proposed merger.
The committee’s deputy chair Mike Holdgate, who is also the CCG’s lead for patient and public participation, criticised the original assumption that it should be decided in private.
He said: “Keeping a focus on a balance between the public and the private, I am pleased to see it was a mistake.
“It never should be practice for a merger to ever be thought to be in the private part of the meeting.
“We need to constantly be vigilant about this. We should not have very much in the private part of our meeting.”
Dr Charles Turton, who chairs the committee, apologised for the miscommunication resulting in it originally being included in private session only.
He had to leave the meeting due to a conflict of interest, with the committee’s independent clinical member Dr Jennifer Oates taking over.
The report before the committee said that patients would have higher-quality care in the Beaconsfield Medical Centre’s modern building with a wide range of services.
It would also result in a lower patient to full-time GP ratio of 2,125 patients per full time doctor, compared with 2,476 at Matlock Road.
However, the national average is 1,780.
The CCG’s director of primary and community care Sally Smith said: “Dr Allan feels he is not able to continue delivering general medical services out of Matlock Road as a ‘single hander’.
