A MERGER of six GP practices has been given the go ahead by the borough's health bosses.

The greenlight from Bury's Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) means six practices over four sites will be able to merge into one — Tower Family Healthcare.

Kieran Patel, medical director for Bury GP Federation, practices at Greenmount Medical Centre, one of the sites included in the merger.

Dr Patel said one of the key driving forces behind the decision to unite was the recruitment crisis being faced by GP surgeries.

During a presentation to the CCG yesterday, Dr Wissam El-Jouzi, of Tottington Medical Practice, said when his practice had needed a new partner they faced difficulties finding a new one.

Dr El-Jouzi, said: "Typically when a partner post comes up we would be inundated with CVs.

"We could see 600 people had viewed the advert and on deadline day we had one expression of interest.".

The merger work has been funded by the practices budgets, as one provider they will continue to have contracts with the NHS, but will have one instead of six.

Practices which have signed up to the merger are Greenmount Medical Centre in Brandlesholme Road, Spring Lane Surgery, Radcliffe, Tottington Medical Practice in Market Street and the Minden Family Practices in Derby Way, which houses the Yacht, Waves and Anchor practices.

At the CCG meeting the GPs said the merger would come with benefits for the around 50,000 practice patients.

Using anonymised patients the CCG was given examples of how the merger would benefit patients.

Dr El-Jouzi gave the example of the patient 'Louise' who discovered a lesion on her back and went to her GP.

He said: "It was a low grade skin cancer and she needed to have it removed, the site had a minor surgery clinic but no specialist so she had to be referred to a secondary care unit."

It took Louise three hospital trips, with three days off work over four months to complete her treatment.

With the merged services Dr El-Jouzi said the situation would be different. Different sites will be able to share staff, like specialists and clinics so Louise would have been able to get an appointment with a specialist a week later and follow up appointments could have been carried out outside of work hours.

In the example envisaged by Dr El-Jouzi, Louise had no time off work and her treatment was completed in four weeks.

Tower Family Healthcare will open on July 1 and the CCG said excepting £23,000 for IT services, the merger was cost neutral to the CCG.