Polyclinics ‘threaten’ traditional surgeries
pharmafile | April 22, 2008 | News story | |Â Â Â
The Conservatives have attacked government efforts to reform the health service, warning that plans for new polyclinics will endanger the traditional family doctor.
Tory leader David Cameron said Labour's call to establish 150 new polyclinics would lead to the closure of almost 1,700 GP surgeries in England – nearly a fifth of all existing practices.
The number is based on the Conservative party's own data, and was delivered in Cameron's address to health think-tank the King's Fund.
He said: "The plan for a national network of polyclinics is the biggest upheaval in primary care since the creation of the NHS or even since the beginning of modern general practice in the 19th century."
The plan to put polyclinics – combinations of GP surgeries and a variety of other services – at the root of primary care was proposed by health minister Lord Darzi and has sparked much contention in the health service.
Many of the NHS frontline doubt the new model will either save money or improve services, and have raised concerns just as Darzi gears up to release his final proposals for a new-look NHS in June.
David Cameron was seeking to build on this opposition and in his speech to the King's Fund, which listed a catalogue of reforms and counter-reforms brought in by Labour in the last ten years, accused the government of having no direction to its healthcare policy.
His said he did not object to polyclinics in principle, but was against the idea of imposing them on local communities without public support and against the wishes of GPs.
He added: "Where they occur, they should occur naturally, as the voluntary combination of free agents – not as the latest structural re-organisation of the NHS. Lord Darzi, the health minister behind the polyclinics plan, has admitted that doctors will, effectively, be forced into polyclinics using the GP contract. It is quite wrong."
Instead Cameron said GPs should manage the entire relationship that a patient has with the NHS, and that they should be responsible for providing the care that patients need or commissioning it from other providers.
Health secretary Alan Johnson responded to Cameron's remarks by accusing him of misleading the public. He told the BBC there is no plan to cut the number of surgeries.
"We are opening 150 new GP-run health centres, open from 0800 to 2000, seven days a week," he said, adding: "Because this programme is all paid for with new money, none of it will lead to a reduction in traditional GP services."
But many NHS clinicians will identify with the Tory party line, and have already expressed similar views.
The NHS Alliance, a group representing GPs and other PCT managers, believe the government is bulldozing through polyclinics without due care, and has reacted with a manifesto offering an alternative.
It backed integrated patient care and the practice of GPs from different surgeries working together, but said it can be achieved to greater benefit by virtual organisations and that a one-size-fits-all template would not work.
