Recently, the very first cohort of staff from across all Thurrock partner organisations toured the newly built Corringham Integrated Medical Centre (IMC) building to see first-hand the great work that’s taken place to build a new and dynamic health and care facility aimed at providing community solutions and wellbeing initiatives as well as a range of different services.

The new Corringham IMC, the first of the four IMC’s across Thurrock designed to provide health, care and wellbeing support for residents, will be opened to the public in Summer 2022. It realises the vision of a collaborative approach to supporting the partnership between health, mental health, social care, community and voluntary sectors.

The launch of the new centre reflects Better Care Together Thurrock’s (BCTT) long-standing transformation programme to create a holistic approach to the delivery of primary care, community healthcare and social care. This unified approach to collaborative community support means better outcomes for people closer to home and a strengthening of services offering a comprehensive range of support and initiatives for the public.

These key themes are reflected in the overarching service model for Corringham IMC, which is resourced to support Adult Mental Health and Community Health Services, Sexual Health Services, Primary Care, Adult Social Care Community and Third Sector Support, Children and Young people Services, Lifestyle & Wellbeing Services, Long-Term Conditions, Outpatients and Diagnostics such as Phlebotomy, Ultrasound, Abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) Screening.

Reactions from staff were positive, with many commenting on how natural light was well-utilised to provide a sense of openness and calm in the clinical and communal spaces of the building.

 “It was a valuable learning exercise to capture staff feedback as part of our first site tour. It gave us a chance to really hear and understand what staff were most interested to know about, and to capture any concerns raised during the visit and be able to respond in a meaningful and timely way. We certainly have quite a breadth of valuable feedback to now take back to our working group and look at how we can incorporate into our wider plans for the new building as we continue to build and transform health and community services across Thurrock, starting with the Corringham IMC,” said Transformation Project Lead Nicola Windsor.

For anyone who is interested in touring the new facility, there will be further opportunities available in April.

We’ll have more to share about the progress of the new facility as we move towards launching later this year.

If you have any questions or would like to know more about the IMC’s programme, contact communications@nelft.nhs.uk or visit the BCTT website.

Photos by Central Photography.com