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Health strategy is ‘hokum’ that reveals little to public
• “IT’S hokum,” said my husband affably but firmly as he handed back to me my copy of the Primary and Urgent Care Strategy.
“And it doesn’t tell you anything.” Well, I hadn’t put my finger on the word hokum.
I was thinking more along the lines of bland blah-blah, wondering who could have written an important document, one intended to help the public reach a well-informed opinion, without parting with much detail. Someone as thick as two short planks nailed together, I said to myself.
Then I realised that the writer was in fact very clever, clever enough to ramble on for pages without telling us anything that might help us reach that informed opinion. Their aims are splendid and just what we could want for ourselves and our communities; what could be more honourable than to work to give us all longer, healthier lives and to remove the disgraceful 10-year gap between the life expectancies of the richest and poorest neighbourhoods?
But how to achieve these goals? They propose polyclinics where “…services will be focused on individual needs and choices…” Hurray, I said. and read on to see how they could do that: “…providing the continuity of care we know you value.” What care specifically? And differing how from what we have now?
“Real integrated care and partnership working, recognising the contribution of the entire work force.” And yes, “prevention is better than cure…” but how to do it? Well! “Facilities and services that will improve the quality of life for the people of Camden.”
I took against the “more knowledgeable than thou” tone, and I became seriously alarmed that while the document often repeats that a primary aim is “to improve your access to a GP…” it never mentions “your GP.”
We know that no GP can always be seen; he or she has a life and a family just as we have. We settle for the “highly trained clinician” but there is no mention of “your GP”.
Why not? Is the friendly and personal relationship between doctor and patient to be abandoned?
There’s a spurious questionnaire at the end. “Do you agree we need to spend more money on helping people who have the worst health to live healthier lives?” Do they think we’re heartless skinflints? Or just complete fools?
I can tell them that I’m over 75, white and of American origin, now British, resident in Camden for 46 years, but I’m going to take a while to think about whether I support all their proposals and I hope everyone does.
Why did I only now get a copy of this strategy document? And did you know there is another document out about the future of community nursing services?
I tried to get a copy of that from the James Wigg practice and so spoke to a nurse. She hadn’t heard of it.
I’ll try today to download it from the NHS Camden website and I hope anyone who needs nursing now or may in the future, can lay their hands on it.
Consultation ends in a week.
Priscilla McBride
Chalcot Square, NW1
Clear lessons from America
• THANKS for the brilliant and horrifying article (Top GP slams Camden NHS as ‘megalomaniac and misleading’, October 1)
Thank goodness Dr Iona Heath has spoken so clearly before it’s too late. Health chiefs must listen to patients.
Anyone who has lived in the US and has seen the campsites where many people are forced to live after their homes have been seized to pay for medical care because the insurance companies have a clause and refuse to pay, or even refuse to insure because of an existing health problem, will know that there is “no evidence that for-profits surgeries policy is beneficial to patients” in fact it is the opposite.
Britain needs to wake up to what is going on behind our backs and ask the question Why?
What concerns me is that this government has already let an American insurance company take over a GP practice and has already had access to the central computer with everyone’s health records!
If that is not conflict of interest what is? Don’t people realise how this government is undermining the NHS and misleading the public as described by Dr Heath?
If this privatisation of medical care carries on what will happen when they are unable to get medical insurance? The insurance company will know if you are a good risk or not because they have already had access to your medical records.
Profiting out of the sick is sick.
Boo Oldfield, NW5
Threat to the NHS
• CAMDEN residents have been expressing alarm as the high handed behaviour of Camden NHS, particularly over its decision to appoint Care Ltd to be the operators of the new Hampstead Road super clinic, without consulting the residents.
The support evidence to the clinic’s planning application revealed that there will be minimal numbers of signed-up patients but 20,000 walk-in customers are anticipated to be treated in the first year, rising to 31,000 in year five.
This indicates a radical change of business model away from the personal GP and patient relationship on which the NHS has been built.
The new arrangement seems to assume that doctors will become an interchangeable professional commodity whereby you’re unlikely to see the same doctor twice.
While most readers may believe that a polyclinic is a huge building with 50,000 patients, the Camden NHS hybrid definition is based around one large practice with several small satellites like the James Wigg practice, with Queen’s Crescent and the Caversham practice orbiting.
The current borough-wide fancy strategy consultation is cunningly constructed to lead you through to responding “yes, yes, yes” (like Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally) but a bit of careful thought may lead one to probing the logic.
For example, we are being consulted on page 18 on what we’d like theoretically to see housed in our new polyclinics and, at first, a pharmacy may seem like an obvious adjunct.
But, think twice: Camden’s big practices like the new Kentish Town Health Centre, with 20,000 patients on its panel, keeps two or three absolutely excellent independent local pharmacies in Kentish Town and Camden Road in businesses and we locals would like that to continue.
Provide a pharmacy on site and such local chemists would be under threat for survival. Exactly as the small GP practices threatened in both Regent’s Park and Somers Town wards by the new superclinic.
The consultation closes on October 16 and can be downloaded at: www.camden.nhs.uk/ primaryandurgentcare strategy
Be careful what you pray for because five years from now you could find fewer local GP practices and chemists and any hope of seeing the same doctor twice could become the stuff of the nostalgic Hovis commercials.
Cllr Paul Braithwaite
Lib Dem, Cantelowes ward
Speak up!
• Your article (Top GP slams Camden NHS, October 1) detailed much of the debate at the council health scrutiny committee.
However, there was another key element of the meeting that went unreported. Namely, that hidden in the consultation is a proposal for a new set of facilities for Kilburn. But there were no plans from NHS Camden to discuss this direct with Kilburn or West Hampstead residents.
The whole concept of the polyclinic (or polysystem!) is that it seeks to address health inequalities – that it has a particular success record in areas of high diversity and health needs.
It was therefore a bit off that NHS Camden left Kilburn and West Hampstead off of the proposed circuit for consultation.
That’s why Councillor Janet Grauberg (Kilburn ward) and myself led a deputation calling for some actual consultation, a direct conversation with local residents and an extension to the deadline.
As a result of this deputation NHS Camden extended the deadline to Friday October 16 and set up a meeting for residents to come and voice their views.
Can I urge anyone who cares about Kilburn and West Hampstead and who wants to see better local health provision to contact NHS Camden and make their voice heard.
We have a real chance for better health services in Kilburn and to get facilities located locally rather than offered centrally from hospitals.
Ed Fordham
Parliamentary Campaigner for Hampstead and Kilburn Liberal Democrats
Quex Road, NW6
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