people
case study C
harnwood Community Medical Group has worked hard to change the face of general practice. Starting with
the fact its HQ doesn’t look like a practice – the three-surgery group has recently moved its main centre to a converted school house – Charnwood has become a one-stop-shop for community services, from a pop-up Citizens Advice Bureau to a local museum (artefacts from the closed school are on display in the front entrance). It’s from here the group serves the community, offering new services and on-going preventative medicine, supported by two satellite surgeries. Group business partner Paul Hanlon is clearly proud to be an upstanding member of this community, evidenced in his long-time dedication to the practice. Having been involved in the family-run
We were really doing two projects: a conservation project and a new GP surgery
surgery group almost since birth (his father is a partner), Hanlon worked for Charnwood as a student before going to university to study business and management, getting an MA in the subject and returning to the practice to work fulltime, first in IT and later as business manager and then partner. He was in this position when the practice decided to move its headquarters from a Victorian building 150 metres away to the new Rosebery Medical Centre in August last year.
MOVE FOR THE BETTER This was no whim – the idea to move was in the works for over 15 years. “It was on three levels, so the stairs were awful for patients to access, we didn’t have any parking or enough rooms – but apart from that, it was wonderful,” Hanlon quips about the previous site. The partners looked into a number of possibilities for a new location, but real plans didn’t come into fruition until four years ago, when the practice learned a local school building was up for sale that just might fit the bill. The next challenge was how to fund the
refurbishment of a Grade II listed school house to suit the needs of general practice. Charnwood had notional rent parameters
to operate within, so to make ends meet, it bought the building and its surrounding land and got planning permission to build seven houses on it. It also got Section 106 planning contributions from the local authority for being a community building. Further to this, the practice rents out space in the front to a pharmacy. “It wasn’t quite as simple as going, ‘How much money is there and can we do it?’,” explains Hanlon. “It was, ‘What other ways can we make this site work?’” Making it work meant ensuring the new space would accommodate the practice’s plans for expansion. The team needed to increase its core capacity for general medical services, alongside additional room to host evening events, as well as a minor operating suite. Whatever was offered, it needed to be adaptable to the whims of primary care funding. “We really just wanted the building to be really flexible,” says Hanlon. That means moveable walls and changeable spaces to adapt to changing services, as well as a key fob system with varying degrees of access entitlement. “What we didn’t realise at that time is
we were really doing two projects: We were doing a conservation project and a new GP surgery,” says Hanlon, of the move to the Grade II-listed building. “Luckily, through the whole process, the two didn’t contradict themselves too much. There weren’t many times that we had to compromise on a functional GP surgery versus a sympathetic restoration.” This, he says, is because they had “a fantastic architect” and a “really good relationship with the local planning department” and its heritage officer. “It helped that we weren’t doing anything too controversial,” he adds, “and it helped that we had really good support from all the local residents and the patients as well.”
LOCAL SUPPORT Having local residents on board was an achievement in itself, since when the school closed seven years ago, it wasn’t a popular decision. “I think people were generally quite happy to see it have a new community use once it couldn’t be a school,” says Hanlon. They were also glad to see the surgery wasn’t making many drastic changes to the school interior, either, and the fact the heritage of the site was celebrated by way of artefacts, like the school bell, on display outside the reception area. “It’s just a new chapter,” says Hanlon of the building’s latest incarnation.
october 2013 29
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