BMA rails against polyclinics
pharmafile | May 30, 2008 | News story | |
Doctors have come together to attack plans to introduce polyclinics to London, claiming the reforms are not proven to improve patient services.
Rank and file general practitioners speaking at the BMA event in London expressed deep concern over the plans, which they said represented creeping privatisation of the health service.
Professor Wendy Savage, chairman of the lobby group Keep Our NHS Public, pointed out that many private sector schemes in secondary care were axed last year because they had failed to show value for money or improve services.
She warned that polyclinics would now repeat the same mistake in primary care.
She added: "This creation of the healthcare market is based on ideology not evidence."
Labour's use of the private sector to introduce choice and competition into NHS services has always drawn opposition from clinicians, but the NHS Next Stage Review from Lord Darzi may provoke the greatest conflict yet.
Darzi's grand plan for nationwide change is expected within the next few weeks, but pilot schemes of polyclinics are already underway in London and GPs are alarmed that private sector companies are winning contracts.
Labour's reforms aim to improve services and ultimately save money by switching spending away from costly hospital-based services, but the BMA claims the changes will undermine the traditions and values of the NHS.
The BMA says polyclinics draw unnatural divisions between secondary and primary care services, and will led to impersonalised, fragmented and lax patient care – an inevitability that could still be worsened if the facilities fall to the private sector.
Darzi's interim review pledged to identify and build ten pilot polyclinics in London by the end of March 2008.
PCTs were to assess bids from either the public or private sector to run the new facilities, and award the contract to the group offering the best value for the NHS.
Dr Stephen Graham, a GP in North London, explained how he and his colleagues had been trumped by company United Care in their bid for a new Camden facility. He says that scrutiny of the winning tender shows it to be highly flawed.
This illustrated, according to Graham, that the PCT was ill equipped to make such a decision, but also that private companies will always have more funding and business experience to outbid a group of local clinicians, which could open the gate to a fully privatised NHS.
The BMA also claims polyclinics could see up to 50% of London's acute trusts close, along with scores of GP surgeries, even though there was no evidence that the public wanted to them in place.
Dr John Lister, author of 'The NHS after 60: for patients or for profits?' criticised the claim from a government funded survey that 51% of the public agreed almost all GP practices in London should be part of a polyclinic, either networked or same-site.
He said that this percentage of respondents comprised only 1900 people – which is less than 0.3% of London's population.
The BMA has resolved to maintain its campaign to prevent or at least stall the roll out of the plans, and see the money instead on improvement of existing services.
It has launched a petition open to GPs and the public at www.supportyoursurgery.org.uk, which will be presented to Downing Street on 6 June 2008. The London Regional Council is also in discussion about possible next steps.
