Updated 8 November 2018
Beacon Primary Care is located in Skelmersdale, Lancashire. The practice operates across four sites in the local area and patients can access appointments at any site of their preference. We inspected two of the four sites, the main site at Sandy Lane Health Centre and the site at Hillside Health Centre, Skelmersdale. There are additional sites at Railway Road, Ormskirk and North Meols Health Centre, Church Road situated in Banks, Southport. The link to the practice website is www.beaconprimarycare.org.uk.
There are 16307 patients on the practice list. The majority of patients are white British with a lower than average number of people over the age of 65, and a higher average number of people under the age of 18 years. The practice is in the fourth least deprived decile. Level one represents the highest levels of deprivation and level ten the lowest.
The practice is part of the West Lancashire Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG). Services are provided under a general medical service (GMS) contract with NHS England. Sandy Lane Health Centre is housed in a two storey property owned by NHS Property Services and offers access and facilities for disabled patients and visitors. There are two additional GP practices which share the building. North Meols Health Centre merged with Beacon Primary Care in July 2016 and a service has been provided to students at Edge Hill University since September 2016. Beacon Primary Care have been caretaking the service at Viran Medical Centre now located in Tarleton since July 2017.
The practice opens between 8am and 6.30pm every day except Monday, when the North Meols site is open until 8pm for extended hours access and Wednesday when it also offers a late surgery until 8.30pm at the Railway Road site. Patients requiring a GP outside of normal working hours are advised to contact an external out of hour’s service provider Vocare.
Beacon Primary Care are part of the North West Alliance (NWA) which includes two practices in Southport and Formby Clinical Commissioning Group.
The practice has two GP partners, one female and one male. There are also six salaried GPs, five female practice nurses, three nurse prescribers five nurse practitioners, one minor operations nurse, six health care assistants, a practice manager, two deputy practice managers and a team of reception and administration staff. These staff work across all four sites to provide comprehensive cover at all times. The practice has also recruited two additional advanced nurse practitioners who are due to commence employment with the practice in the coming weeks in addition to a further non-clinical post commencing in November 2018 with responsibility for patient and public engagement and service organisational development.
The practice offers placements to medical students, GPs in training, physician associate students and student nurses.