Practice Mergers

Introducing Southampton Sea City Partnership

As you may already know, in 2024 St Marys and Mulberry surgeries merged together to form one GP Practice serving Southampton’s inner city and Portswood neighbourhoods from our three surgery sites at St Marys Surgery, Telephone House Surgery and Mulberry Surgery.

This year in 2025 we are planning to merge together with Victor Street Surgery (in Shirley), to form a new organisation called the Southampton Sea City Partnership. Coming together will help us to develop more services for you and your family and improve the way you can access services. Government policies, NHS funding and other opportunities are likely to be more favourable towards larger practices in future and we are confident that working at a slightly bigger scale will help us to better help you.

1^st April marks the first significant step in collaboration between Victor Street and St Marys Surgeries. This is when our two Partnerships come together as one. Partnerships are generally made up of GPs (plus sometimes a non-clinical partner) who come together to run a GP practice. Whilst this partnership merger has significant implications from a legal and organisational level, on a day-to-day basis the partnership merger itself will not have any immediate or direct effect on the way we run our services. From 1^st April we will be known formally as Southampton Sea City Partnership.

Over the coming months and years, we will continue to strive to improve our services for our patients. This will sometimes mean changing the way we work together to help make this happen. We are conscious that whilst working together and changing the way we do things can bring great benefits, it also takes a lot of effort and also that change can be disruptive. We have learned a lot from our experiences of coming together with Mulberry last year. We will try to only ever make changes “for the better”. We will also ensure that we keep the public, our patients, our staff and other partners, engaged and involved so we can develop our new ideas and make changes together.

From October 2025 we are aiming to improve the ways that you can access our services across all Sea City Partnership services. We are starting work to plan these changes now. The first thing we are planning to do in October is to merge to form one single practice or service, meeting the needs of about 40,000 people who live in the city. We understand the importance of being local and we will continue to provide services from our four sites at St Marys, Telephone House, Mulberry and Victor Street surgeries. We know it’s sometimes important to be able to see a GP or other member of our team that you already know, at your local GP surgery - particularly if you have more complex health needs or find traveling challenging. Working with a bigger team will also enable us to develop more services for you and your family and improve the way you can access services. Another thing we are exploring for October 2025 is improving our digital access (currently this is via e-consult) so that you can access our services “on-line” more of the time. As a slightly bigger organisation we will be able to develop and offer new services for our wider population.

If you are interested in knowing more about these plans, have any questions or have any concerns please contact us. You can do this by emailing us using our secure online form, by phoning our reception team or by popping into the practice. We may need to take your details but we will get back to you. In order to help understand these proposed changes, we have pulled together the following frequently asked questions (and answers) we will continue to listen to our patients and try to answer questions as they arise. We will update this page as more questions and answers are added.

Frequently Asked Questions . . . . .

Q. What is the difference between a GP partnership and GP practice and a GP surgery?

A. A GP partnership is a group of GPs (and sometimes non-GP) partners who come together in a partnership to run a GP practice. The partners are ultimately responsible for the running of the practice, employing the staff and the services provided. NHS England has contracts with GP partnerships for the delivery of primary care services. The services delivered under these contracts are referred to GP practices. GP practices are operated by the GP partnerships and their teams from GP surgeries. GP surgeries are the buildings we operate from.

Q. Who / what is Victor Street

A. Victor Street is a well-established GP partnership and practice which has proudly served communities around Shirely and the western part of Southampton for many years. Victor Street has one surgery site, which is next to Sainsburys in Shirley and the practice serves around 11000 patients. Victor Street has a team of GPs, Practice Nurses, an Advanced Practitioner, pharmacists, Social Prescribing Link workers, Receptionists, Administrators and more.

Q. What are the plans for 1^st April 2025

On 1^st April 2025, the partnerships of St Marys surgery and Victor Street surgery will come together as one partnership – called the Sea City Partnership

Q. What will change for me as a patient from 1st April 2025 as a result of the partnership merger?

A. You shouldn’t notice much (if anything) when the partnerships merge. Hopefully any changes you do experience going forward will be an improvement.

Q. What are the plans for 1st October 2025

There are two big changes that we are planning for 1^st October.

1. The first is to merge our services to operate as one GP practice – running over our 4 sites.  We will be careful We understand the importance of being local and we will continue to provide services from our four sites at St Marys, Telephone House, Mulberry and Victor Street surgeries. We know it’s sometimes important to be able to see a GP or other member of our team that you already know, at your local GP surgery - particularly if you have more complex health needs or find traveling challenging.  We need to apply to NHS Hampshire and Isle of Wight for permission to merge our services.  We will be making this application in summer of 2025.
2. The second is to improve the ways you can access our services – improving on-line access (currently via e-consult)

We are keen to hear patients questions, views and ideas about these plans and will be reaching out to our patients and the wider community over the coming months to support this.

Q. If I am a St Marys or Mulberry patient, will I need to go to Victor Street for an appointment ? (and vice versa)

A. Quick answer is no. Generally speaking, we will know which patients who were previously registered with St Marys, Mulberry or Victor Street. Patients who usually have appointments at Mulberry (for example) will continue to be offered appointments there. If a patient who was previously registered at Mulberry would like to have an appointment at St Marys or Telephone House, then we may be able to accommodate this. In the future we may develop new more specialist services (e.g. physiotherapy or mental health services) and might sometimes offer these from one of our three sites. We don’t have any firm plans for this yet though and would be interested in patients thoughts on this. From our experience of merging St Marys and Mulberry surgeries last year, we have found that some patients don’t mind having an appointment at a different site – if it means they can be seen sooner.

Q. Will you be closing any sites?

A. Quick answer is no. We have no plans to close any of the surgery sites.

Q. Will I need to see a different doctor or nurse to who I am used to?

A. As above we will know which patients have traditionally used Mulberry, Victor Steet or St Marys by their postcode. We will also be able to see in patients records who their usual doctor or nurse is. We will try to ensure that people can access “continuity of care”, which means seeing a clinician that you know, at a site local to where you live. This is particularly important for people with more complex or ongoing health issues. Evidence suggests that for people with more complex needs, continuity of care is better for patient health outcomes and also for the clinicians involved. For some people who need to access quick advice for a simple problem, we have found that speed of appointment is sometimes more important than seeing a particular clinician. We will try to develop our services with the right balance of “continuity of care” for those who need it and improved access for everyone.

Q. Will the services at my surgery change?

A. We will not be making any sudden changes to the way you receive care or access services. Over time we will be looking to improve the way we offer services from all of our surgeries. This might mean that you have a different experience to how you access services now – but in all cases we will only be looking to improve patient care and experience by these changes. When we are making bigger changes, we will ensure that we involve our patients, the public and our staff in our planning.

Q. Will opening hours change?

A. No – if anything, being a bit bigger will enable us to offer a wider range of service across wider opening hours

Published: Jan 19, 2024