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Only 100 patients said they want nearly all GPs attached to polyclinics
• TOM Foot’s excellent article rightly draws attention to widespread fears that major changes to Camden’s GP services are imminent (Out-of-hours doctors win two-year reprieve from axe, May 22). Camden PCT is saying that the case for change, including the creation of several large polyclinics in Camden to which all GP practices will be attached, has been made. It certainly hasn’t – fewer than 100 of Camden’s 200,000 patients have said they want nearly all GPs to be attached to polyclinics!
The polyclinic issue is a complex and confused one, and I should like to clarify and in part correct some of what Tom Foot quoted me as saying.
I do believe that, in some cases, polyclinics may bring significant benefits. Bringing together GP practice teams, hospital services, diagnostic facilities, social and voluntary care services makes good sense for patients and for doctors – as long as patients can still see a doctor who knows them, near to their home.
Improving existing GP surgeries and supporting them to work with each other around one or two central hubs where a wider range of services are located is, in my view and that of my colleagues, the way to do it. The James Wigg and Caversham Practices have in fact worked together in this way for more than 30 years. Our joint application to be a pilot twin hub polyclinic gives us a chance to develop our ideas and services further and to share those ideas and services with other nearby GP practices and their patients. We welcome the support of the PCT in taking this pilot forward, but we will, of course, be consulting and seeking the support of patients and colleagues too.
I am, it is true, concerned about plans to site two polyclinics in acute hospitals, UCLH and the Royal Free. Some (at first a minority) of the surrounding GP practices will be moved into surplus hospital space; patients of those practices will have further to travel to see their doctor and may find a hospital-type environment more intimidating. These patients may certainly be less likely to see a doctor who knows them; some of the practices based in the hospital may have to be expanded to deal with most of the hospital’s casualty attendances too.
I am certainly concerned about private sector takeovers of more Camden practices: the reports in the CNJ and elsewhere of what is apparently already going on in Camden practices taken over by UnitedHealth should concern us all. Poly-clinics are certainly prime targets for the private sector, although I did not say that polyclinics will necessarily be put out for competitive tender. The government is so keen though for the private sector to be guaranteed a big slice of the NHS cake that they are now insisting every PCT builds at least one new health centre (a sort of cut-down polyclinic) whether it’s needed or not – and these have to be put out for competitive tender. The NHS is approaching its 60th birthday. If we do not take action to defend it now most of us believe there will be very little left to defend by its 65th birthday.
Dr Stephen Amiel
Chair, Camden & Islington Local Medical Committees
• QUESTIONS for the chair of the primary care trust, Dr John Carrier, who said: “that the consultation has proved ‘a case for change’ and that Camden patients support the proposal of federated polyclinics.”
Can he please tell us: When was this consultation with patients? How was the patients’ support questioned and expressed in the consultation? What were both the numbers consulted and the numbers supporting polyclinics?
I do not support polyclinics.
Needless to say, I was also not consulted by the PCT on this question. Nor, I suspect, were the majority of Camden PCT patients.
PJ White
NW1
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