A MULTI-MILLION pound medical practice was on its way to getting a 'stern warning' from a health watchdog until an outside company stepped in to help overworked doctors.

The back office running of Kington Medical Practice was taken over by Integral Medical Holdings last year and their CEO Richard Power said his company stepped in at the right time.

He said: "They were on their way to getting a stern warning from the Care Quality Commission (CQC).

"From our perspective the procedures were not as good as we would have liked. After being proactive we are now likely to pass the CQC report."

The national medical company now run the HR, finance, recruitment, support and look at implementing the best practices at the building which opened in September 2012 costing £3.5 million.

Dr David Jones, Chief Medical Officer for Integral Medical Holdings also addressed Kington Town Council on Monday night.

He added: "Overall the standard of care is high and the doctors working there are excellent but what they have struggled with is the organisation behind the scenes.

"We are looking to re-build that and creating a more open relationship with the community.

"We have a good walk-in service providing day to day medical needs but what we need to do is free up GPs time to deal with the complicated stuff.

"The building is at risk of being a white elephant, it should be doing all of the things it was designed to do that have ground to a halt."

Mr Power said that the new partnership meant that if one or both of Kington's two doctors were on leave then their company could get doctors in from across the country to help the practice to continue as normal.

However, he added that they were looking to recruit an additional full-time doctor and hoped they had found a new manager for the practice after the previous one left last month.

Mr Power added that the community needed to work with the partnership so they could put a business case to the NHS for what additional services the building could provide.

He said: "We are trying to make a very good building into a central hub not just for Kington.

"We are putting our hands out to the community as we need to work together. It is important the doctors feel part of the community and community feel part of the surgery.

“Staff in the practice are of the highest standard and the changes coming will help with systems and process allowing them to perform to an extremely high level”