Banbury Cross Health Centre

South Bar House, Oxford Road, Banbury. OX16 9AD.

Caring for 40 000 patients and based in Banbury town centre.

GP Training

There is a strong training ethos in the practice and a long history of GP training since the 1970s. We currently have three experienced GP Trainers:

Dr Stephen Haynes, Dr Ann Sanders, and Dr Nicky Elliott.

We run many educational sessions in the practice alongside the regular tutorials.  This includes a journal club and weekly business and clinical meetings.  We are a cheerful bunch and prioritise getting together for coffee every day at 11am.

The practice also has foundation doctors in training and 4th and 5th year Oxford medical students throughout the year. There is plenty of opportunity to teach others if you are interested. We also encourage trainees to take advantage of the extra services we offer such as getting involved in implants, IUDs, joint injections, etc.

We are also involved in training the wider team; for example HCAs to become nursing associates, pharmacists to become prescribers and so there is a culture of teaching and training throughout the practice.

Through covid 19 we have adapted rapidly to change, running mainly telephone and video consulting and slowly moving back to face to face consultations in recent weeks.   The future is likely to be a hybrid of these different ways of consulting.  We are also proud to be one of the Banbury covid vaccination centres.

If you want a practice that is multidisciplinary, lively and looking forwards to the future then we are the place to come!

The Location

The practice cares for patients living in Banbury and the surrounding villages with a five mile radius. It has been formed from the merger of Banbury Health Centre, Horsefair Surgery and West Bar Surgery in 2019/20.  It is run by Principal Medical Limited.  This is a local company founded by GPs in 2004 to bid for and develop innovative primary care services.  There is site at South Bar House, very near the Horton Hospital and also a smaller site in the centre of Banbury.  South Bar House is a purpose-built spacious premises which is shared with a retail chemist on the ground floor.

The Patients

There are some 40,000 patients registered with the practice from a mixed socio- economic profile and a relatively high level of deprivation in parts.

The practice is also unique in Oxfordshire in being its own Primary Care Network.  This allows the exciting prospect of being able to develop new services and models of working for such a large practice population. 

The practice is fully embracing multidisciplinary working and the GP forward view.  There is an active patient participation group.

The Practice Team

The GP team are salaried and there are currently 26 GPs working across the 2 sites. We have developed a MDT approach to primary care with patients being directed by a trained Call Centre Team to a Pharmacist , Physiotherapist , Mental Health Nurse , ANP , ECP , Pharmacist or GP depending upon who can best help their issue. This can lead the GPs to deal with more appropriate health care issues and spending time supervising and mentoring other team members. The GP and other team members have a variety of specialist clinical interests, including family planning (GPs and Nurses) women’s health, medical officers for independent schools , nursing home care (ANP and GPs)  learning disability, drug dependence care, ENT, dermatology, minor surgery, joint injections (Physiotherapist and GPs) , dive medicine, GP training and teaching medical students and foundation doctors.

Other practice staff include a practice manager and 2 deputies, Call Centre , Pharmacy Team (Pharmacists , Technicians and Receptionists, A receptionist team for front of house management, a training manager, secretaries/PAs to the doctors, registration clerks, audit and business support teams, a rota manager, and a Data team responsible  for scanning and note summarising.  

The practice has close links with community staff who are also based at the same premises such as health visitors and the hospital at home team.

Services to Patients

In addition to general medical services, offered via a traditional General

Medical Services (GMS) Contract, the following services are provided on site:

Antenatal clinics, Asthma services, Baby clinics, Child health and immunization services Contraception, including IUCD fits and implants, Counselling, COPD care, Diabetic clinics, Drugs and alcohol counselling, Joint injections, Midwifery services, Minor surgery, Nasal cautery, Nurse Practitioners and ECP, Palliative care links with Katherine House Hospice, Phlebotomy, Pharmacists, Travel vaccinations and advice, Early Visiting service, Community Gynaecology clinic, Cervical smears, Wound dressings and Leg ulcer clinic.

Website

The practice has a well-developed website www.banburycrosshealthcentre.co.uk