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Medical centre’s oldest patient to perform official opening
12/05/2023
A Community Day will mark the pandemic delayed official celebration
Brackley Medical Centre will finally be officially opened tomorrow – some two years, five months and 28 days after staff first moved into the building.
The facility on Wellington Road first became operational on November 16, 2020, but that was just 11 days after the second pandemic lockdown came into force, leaving no option for celebrating at the time.
The belated official opening will be marked with a Community Day and local people are being encouraged to pop down. One of the practise’s oldest patients – a lady who is a centenarian – has agreed to cut the ribbon.
The Medical Centre is based on Wellington Road, so named in memory of a World War II Vickers Wellington III aircraft which crashed on the site on March 17, 1944. One of the areas inside the Centre has been named the Wellington Suite and this will also be officially opened during the afternoon, with relatives of the aircraft’s crew attending.
The path to creating Brackley Medical Centre was a long-held vision that finally came to fruition. Medical Centre partner, Dr Paul Parsons, said: “This has been a project that’s been in the planning for many years. It’s a collaboration between local GP’s and Northamptonshire NHS Foundation Trust and a whole range of other locally invested organisations, to put together what we hope is a fully integrated healthcare facility here in the heart of Brackley.
“It’s quite a large building over three floors. The GP surgeries are at the heart of it on the ground floor.
“We also have a Community Hospital on the top floor with sixteen inpatient beds, which really replaces the old Brackley Cottage Hospital which closed some years ago. That was always a very much loved and valued local facility and we’d like to think that the new Community Hospital builds on the success of that, offering intermediate care, respite and terminal care, in what is really a very lovely facility.
“There’s also a pharmacy downstairs and we have all of the community services which were historically located in various places around the South of the county – a base for school and district nurses, physiotherapy units and gym. It really is a one stop shop for the local area.”
The Community Day will run between 2 and 5pm with displays by local health and wellbeing groups, performances by Brackley & District Band and Brackley Male Voice Choir, competitions, a treasure hunt, face painting, refreshments, and a raffle.
Dr Parsons added: “We’re thrilled we’ve got here after all these years. We like to think that we are setting an exemplar for how primary care and community care can be delivered going into the future.”
Published: by Banbury FM Newsteam