Stockton GPs offered money to take on violent patients
- Published
The Birchtree Practice is due to close at the end of March 2019
Doctors are being offered money as an incentive to take on "violent and threatening" patients.
Stockton GP surgeries are being asked to sign up patients from the Birchtree Practice, which is closing.
A number are on the Special Allocation Scheme (SAS), previously known as the violent patient scheme, which offers care to more difficult patients.
Health bosses said they could not be without GP services, irrespective of what had happened.
Hartlepool and Stockton Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) said any surgeries which took them on would receive an "enhanced payment".
'Additional incentive'
Director of commissioning Karen Hawkins said patients who were "aggressive" or had committed an offence would be removed from the GPs' list.
Traditionally SAS patients were seen in one specialist surgery, regardless of where in the area they lived, the Local Democracy Reporting Service said.
The CCG's plan is for them to be "rehabilitated" to rejoin a mainstream practice which would be paid an "additional incentive" to take them on and to train staff.
The practice on Lawson Street is due to close at the end of March 2019 after health bosses decided not to renew its contract.
Of the 460 patients still on its books, 42 are on the SAS programme.
The CCG said it would talk to surgeries, and work with them on the new service, but did not yet know if any would be willing to take on the patients.