Surrey Downs’ GP commissioning group has now revealed what caused the sudden closure of clinics run by an acclaimed healthcare service on Monday.

Patients and doctors reacted with shock and anger to the closures at the hugely-popular award-winning NHS service, the Epsom Downs Integrated Care Services, Edics, which provided high-quality treatment for more than 3,000 patients in specialist community clinics in the area.

In response to questions by the Epsom Guardian yesterday, Miles Freeman, chief officer of Surrey Downs Clinical Commissioning Group (SDCCG) revealed that it decided last month not to renew Edics’ £5m contract when it expired on July 31 after the two organisations were unable to agree the terms of a new contract.

It had hoped Edics would continue seeing its patients for another month to allow it time to make alternative arrangements. 

But he said that on July 30 Edics said it planned to services on August 1.

Following an emergency meeting that day Edics argeed to continue running its clinics for a further week but that still left SDCCG racing against time to find clinics to take over the work and inform all the affected patients by August 9.

Edics treated patients with a wide range of treatment, from plastic surgery to cardiology and gynaecology to back pain.  It did this at a large and recently refurbished clinic at the Ebbisham Centre, in Epsom; as well as clinics at Old Cottage Hospital, in Alexandra Road, Epsom; Leatherhead Hospital; and the Tattenham Health Centre.

The Ebbisham Centre clinic shut its doors on Monday and a minority of patients elsewhere will have to travel as far as Cobham for treatment in future.

Mr Freeman, who personally made the decision not to renew Edics contract on behalf of its executive committee, said "serious concerns around value for money" had prevented Edics' contract from being extended.

He explained an independent audit was carried out into the services provided by Edics.  Whilst it did not find any issues relating to patient care or quality, it did highlight serious concerns around value for money.

He said: "This is now the subject of a contractual dispute between the two organisations which unfortunately means we were not able to extend the contract longer-term as originally planned.

"Throughout these discussions we were clear we wanted a smooth transition for patients.  To achieve this we planned to extend the contract for a further month while other arrangements were made.

"On 30 July Edics informed us they would be ceasing to provide services after 31 July. 

"We met with Edics later that day and agreed services would continue to be provided for seven days while other plans were made."

He said SDCCG supports providing more care in the community and will review the current arrangements "in the next couple of months".

A SDCCG spokeswoman said Mr Freeman made the decision, but that the issue was discussed at a meeting of its executive committee, which includes four Surrey Downs GPs.

She said the CCG "would have liked to go to more GPs and have a wider conversation" about the decision, but that it was constrained by rules surrounding conflicts of interests - as almost one-third of SDCCG’s members had shareholder or member interests in Edics.

She added: "GPs can’t be involved in decisions where they have interests so we weren’t able to engage as widely as we would have liked."

But she said SDCCG held a meeting with GPs last week to inform them of the changes.