Caring for more patients in the community has put Great Yarmouth and Waveney 'ahead of the game' in the bid to ease pressure on GPs, a newly-reappointed health group chairman has said.

John Stammers, a GP and partner at the Sole Bay Health Centre in Reydon, near Southwold, said the key goal of NHS services along the east coast is now to work together to ease promote new ways of caring for people.

After being reappointed as chairman of HealthEast - the Great Yarmouth and Waveney clinical commissioning group (CCG) - by fellow GPs for three years, he said: 'I am proud of a lot of the things we have achieved since the CCG was established. Not least has been our unwavering focus on delivering the best possible care for our patients.

'In order to do that, we have had to make changes, such as closing the community hospital in Lowestoft and replacing it with a whole range of different community services to deliver care closer to people's homes.

'Although change has been challenging at times, the end results have been well worth it because we

are now providing much better care and increased patient satisfaction while emergency admissions into hospital are also reducing.'

Dr Stammers, a medical officer in the RAF before moving to Southwold Surgery in 2001, is the CCG's first chairman after being elected to the role when it was formed in April 2013.

'The past three years have been about setting out the strategy and putting the infrastructure in place to help us create an integrated care organisation, which will be a single NHS family which looks after all our patients. The aim is to have joined-up teams made up of people from a range of different disciplines who work together seamlessly for the benefit of patients.

'The key is to design this care around the needs of any individual rather than delivering care because of the needs of the organisation. The out of hospital model has placed us ahead of the game on this by opening up real opportunities to improve services for people, and we look forward to building on this success further in the years to come.'

Andy Evans, chief executive of the CCG, said: 'We are delighted that John has agreed to continue as our chairman.

'His clinical insight has been absolutely vital in all we have achieved so far, and will become even more essential as we start working even more closely across the NHS in future years.'

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