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Camden News - by TOM FOOT
Published: 5 June 2008

£1m to make way for the polyclinic

Royal Free records moved

THE medical records of thousands of Royal Free Hospital patients are being moved to make space for a new polyclinic.
Finance chiefs have set aside £1 million to move the records department on the ground floor of the Hampstead hospital to make way for the new facilities which are set to open later this year.
Polyclinics, bringing GPs and hospital outpatient services under one super-sized roof, are part of a radical shake-up of the healthcare system.
It means patients living within a half-mile radius of the Royal Free will make the hospital, rather than their GPs’ surgeries, their first port of call for everyday complaints and to get prescriptions.
Dr John Horton, a partner at the Park End surgery in South End Green, said: “GPs in the polyclinic would be on the wrong side of the gates and would be under pressure to make referrals to the hospital.”
Three pilot polyclinics are planned for Camden and could be up and running by the end of the year. They will be in the University College London Hospital in Bloomsbury and at the James Wigg practice in Bartholomew Road, Kentish Town.
A Royal Free spokeswoman said: “The trust is consolidating its several libraries into one new library with improved storage and retrieval arrangements for staff.
“This means the space occupied by the current library and other medical records storage spaces in the trust will be vacated later this year. One option for using this space in the lower ground floor at the Royal Free site is a polyclinic.”

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