General practice continues to change and develop beyond all recognition as the 2019/20 GP Contract attempts to enforce the coming together of practices in Primary Care Networks with patient populations of between 30,000 and 60,000 – enough to support a ‘district hospital’. The choice to merge with others has been sparked by the difficulties in maintaining sufficient medical manpower in practices, the difficulties in employing doctors or engaging new partners and, dare I say, the difficulties encountered in finding experienced and capable practice managers. But is it really far more than that? CQC inspections have highlighted a new breed of failing practices that cannot survive for far more reasons than just a bad CQC report.

This checklist has been designed to help highlight the factors that might encourage (or discourage) a practice to merge with another practice or practices. Recent experience has given me an insight into the type of practice that might provide rich pickings for those that want to expand their empire and increase their profits.

How attractive might your practice be, and will you be able to maintain some independence or will it be a complete takeover – the strong taking over the weak? The following ‘tool’ is an attempt to estimate the degree of difficulty you might encounter when merging your practice with another.

A merger assessment tool for general practice

You should be looking for answers that match those answers shown.

If each of your answers matches the answer shown, scoring 4, you can estimate the degree of difficulty you might expect to face if a merger were proposed. It might also act as a reflection of how near to being a ‘failing practice’ you are.

The higher the score, the more susceptible your practice might be to a takeover or the greater the reasons there are for merging.