A regional healthcare agency that runs services across the North East and North Yorkshire has revealed that it will close its surgeries for the Queen's funeral.
Modality, which provides NHS Community Services, has announced that it will be shutting its GPs practices next Monday (September 19) to allow its staff to pay their final respects to the UK's longest-serving monarch for the Queen's state funeral.
If you have an appointment on Monday, you should have received a rescheduled date in the next few weeks.
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This move comes days after Dr Ursula Montgomery, director of Primary Care at NHS UK issued a statement about GP practice closures, saying ''practices will be contractually able to close on this day for their core services.
"Primary care professionals and their teams will want to pay their respects on this day wherever possible and contractually may be supported to do so with the declaration of the bank holiday.''
On their website, Modality stated: ''All Modality practices will be closed on bank holiday Monday 19th September 2022. If you have a practice appointment booked on this date, we will contact you to rearrange.''
Modality has ten practices in Airedale, Wharfdale, and Craven.
The practices that will close are:
- Cross Hills Group Practice
- Farfield Group Practice
- Fischer Medical Centre
- Haworth Medical Practice
- Holycroft Surgery
- Kilmeny Group Medical Practice
- Slisden Surgery
- Steeton Surgery
Modality will also shut their GP practices across Sandwell & Birmingham, East Surrey, Hull, Lewisham, Mid Sussex, Walsall, and Wokingham.
The move to reschedule appointments and treatments has been met with backlash, and people fear appointments and treatments could be rescheduled with the NHS' backlog growing.
Lisa Crooks, a Sunderland resident, took to Facebook to say: ''NHS is on its knees and they cancel appointments. Why? They don't have to do this.''
Not all were outraged, though, with Christine Kane, from Jarrow, saying: ''Most of the people who work for the NHS have served Queen and Country, and deserve a day to do just that! Not as if all services are cancelled!''
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