Fitznells Manor and the Old Cottage Hospital Surgeries
About your practice
The practice has always tried to be at the forefront of development in care and its history reflects this. With the introduction of GP Fundholding at the beginning of the 1990’s we were in three separate practices in Epsom and Ewell. The partners of the Old Cottage Hospital site of the Integrated Care Partnership (ICP) had recently bought that building from the Health Authority (who had declared it redundant) and were developing it, both as a base for their surgery and as a centre capable of delivering a much wider range of services. The partners of the Fitznells Manor site of ICP in Ewell were in two separate practices in the old Bourne Hall Health Centre.
All three practices applied to be in the first wave of GP Fundholding and were granted that status. At this point the two Ewell practices joined together on the Bourne Hall site but there was no real connection between Bourne Hall and the Old Cottage Hospital. However the experience of being first wave fundholders brought them into a moderate amount of contact.
The Old Cottage Hospital developed and opened the Epsom Day Surgery Unit (the first of its kind in the country) and this was able to offer consultant led care within the general practice setting- so called ‘one stop health care’. It is currently able to provide specialist consulting rooms, a day surgery unit, an X-ray and ultrasound unit, physiotherapy and a pharmacy.
At Ewell lack of space was hampering the development of services and in 1994 the combined practices took over the nearby Fitznells Manor (the restored old manor house of Ewell much of it dating back to the 15 th century) as their surgery premises.
When the government introduced the concept of ‘Total Purchasing’ in the mid 1990’s the Epsom and the Ewell practices joined together, along with two other local practices, to form the Epsom and Ewell Total Care Project (TCP). This grouping held together well until the end of the fundholding scheme. The patients of the TCP practices increasingly received their specialist care through the Epsom Day Surgery Unit.
The end of fundholding was followed by the prospect of applying for a new scheme called a Personal Medical Services (PMS) pilot in 1998 and it was this that finally brought Fitznells Manor Surgery and the Old Cottage Hospital together as a single practice called the ICP. This allowed us to retain and develop the many extra services we had built up during the fundholding era. The ICP is now a large organisation of 16 partners, a considerable numbers of other staff and other attached professionals. We look after 25000 patients over the two sites and can cater for the vast majority of their needs ‘in house’ without reference to hospitals elsewhere. We are also actively involved in teaching medical students, future GPs in training and a range of other health care professional. Our nurses have developed a wide range of special skills and contribute a vital role to the care the practice is able to provide.
Partners are on the whole based at one or other of the sites but increasingly there is working between the two sites as not all services are provided at both. Patients will need to move between the two sites for certain aspects of care (for example the X-ray unit is based at the Old Cottage whilst Child Care services are centred on the ‘Wishing Well’ attached to Fitznells in Ewell). The practice has an integrated management and IT system so records are available no matter where patients are seen.
Our aim is to provide you with a range of health related services that are both extensive in scope and of the highest quality.
