From 1st June 2025 Chainbridge Medical Partnership will no longer accept new Shared Care agreements for prescribing and monitoring of specialist medications (unless part of the Gateshead Rhemos system).

Shared Care agreements are for drugs which are higher risk and can only be started on the advice of a Specialist. These drugs need ongoing specialist monitoring to ensure safe and effective prescribing.

We have been receiving a growing number of requests for Shared Care agreements from an increasingly large number of providers. These requests place an increasing amount of work on our Practice team, and at times, this additional workload is impacting our ability to deliver our core services to you, our patients.

Shared Care Agreements are not a ‘core’ part of our work in General Practice, and without adequate resources to deal with this increasing demand, we cannot continue to assure ourselves that patients are safely monitored to the highest standards of care.

For patients with new treatment plans put in place by Specialists, responsibility for prescribing and monitoring your medication will remain solely with your Specialist. Rather than coming to the Practice for monitoring or reviews, you may be given an outpatient appointment at a hospital or other NHS location.

We will continue to accept Shared Care agreements under the Gateshead Rhemos system as monitoring is undertaken by the Specialist. Primary Care in Gateshead have a separate agreement for this. If this changes we may revise this decision.

Examples of medications that may be affected:

We are also unable to undertake prescribing and monitoring for the Northern Region Gender Dysphoria Service.