PolyClinics – Are they the next super GP surgeries ?

Lord Darzi’s view… “I have no doubt in the future we are going to see a critical mass of general practitioners working together rather than what we used to see in the past, which were practices with a single-handed clinician.”

Polyclinics are being touted as the future of the NHS with ministers wanting to see 150 built across England.

With the first 31 being planned in London, will they work?

More than 100 practices are earmarked for closure in London, the first area to reveal plans for the implementation of the clinics. If the proposals are rolled out nationwide, about 1,700 of the 8,700 surgeries in England could shut.

If a trial of the new centres in London, which house GPs alongside other health professionals under the same roof, is successful they could become commonplace across the country.

Alan Johnson

Health Secretary Alan Johnson has insisted that polyclinics will provide a “first-class” health service. He said the centres – which will offer specialist treatments under the same roof – will be in addition to surgeries already in existence, but admitted some smaller practices will be merged.

They would include district nurses and rehabilitation teams working alongside GPs as well as “community matrons”, who provide sick or disabled elderly people out of hospital with care in their own homes.

The government is effectively going to be looking for the cheapest bidder to run these health centres. The government is going to set up in competition directly with existing practices rather than supporting and developing them. What is going to happen is a duplication of services that won’t necessarily meet patients’ needs.

 Every local Primary Care Trust in England has been told that it has to have at least one new “GP-led heath centre” as part of the review of the NHS being conducted by Lord Darzi of Denham. These will have family doctors and nurses working in teams, and perhaps also provide services such as pharmacy, dentistry and minor surgery.

 But medical leaders fear that private companies such as Virgin, United Health and supermarket chains will be offered contracts to run the surgeries at the expense of local doctors, whose practices may have to close.

 United Healthcare Plans

One of the other chief concerns about the polyclinic plan is the way it will undermine the role of the generalised GP who can see any patient who walks through the door.

One of Lord Darzi’s other plans is that these centres would have a greater degree of specialists — for childcare, for women’s problems. That actually starts to undermine the generalised role of the GP and means the GP can no longer see just about anyone who walks in the door and provide a holistic, generalised service that patients really value.

(Lord Darzi, who works part time as a surgeon has been asked to look at how healthcare works by the NHS).

Currently GP’s are carrying out petitions ‘Save your local GP practice’.

More than 1.2 million people have signed a petition calling on the Government to support existing GP practices against the threat of closure, and to oppose the involvement of private companies in running local health services.

The British Medical Association (BMA) said that the number of signatures, gathered over a three-week period, showed “huge concern” among the public and the medical profession over plans to shake up existing GP services in England, and the prospect of “creeping commercialisation” in the NHS.

Help yours by signing the petition.

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Keywords: Polyclinic, Primary Care Trust (PCT), British Medical Association (BMA), Local Pharmaceutical Association (LPC), Lord Darzi, Department Of Health (DoH), Hospitals, Super Surgeries, Super GP surgeries.