Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust has been named as the new provider of community health services in Southport and Formby.

Following a rigorous procurement process, NHS Southport and Formby Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) awarded the contract to Mersey Care, which already provides community services in Liverpool and south Sefton.

From 1 May 2021, Mersey Care will take over services including blood testing, district nursing, falls prevention, diabetes care, therapies and rehabilitation and pain management for the whole of Sefton, which will provide continuity of care and a smooth transition of services for patients and community staff.

They take over from Lancashire and South Cumbria NHS Foundation Trust, who chose not to continue providing community services.

Joe Rafferty, Mersey Care’s chief executive, said: “We’re committed to providing the best care as close to home as possible for all our population. This will join up community and mental health services across the Metropolitan Borough of Sefton which will allow for more integration of services, including with primary care, and so allow better results and value for the overall population.

“It’s important that patients understand there will no change in their services, just a change in who manages them, and we want to work with them by asking their views so we can  improve how they access those services.”

Dr Rob Caudwell, chair of NHS Southport and Formby CCG, said: “Community services are often the most commonly used healthcare that our residents will come into contact with after their GP. It’s really important we continue to have such strong leadership and management of these services in the future. We are very much looking forward to working with Mersey Care, who also deliver these services at our counterpart CCG in south Sefton.

“We would like to take this opportunity to thank Lancashire and South Cumbria NHS Foundation Trust and importantly its staff for their continued hard work over the past four years and especially over the last year which has been a challenging one for all of us.

He added: “This is about a change in who manages these services, not about direct care, so patients should not notice any difference to the community services they use, or to the staff who provide them when this change happens.”