The End for Haringey's Polyclinics?

This from a Stop the Health Cuts Coalition circular:

Haringey PCT's '10 year Strategy' of local GP surgery closures consigned to oblivion this week by the UK Government's Health Secretary

UK Government Health Secretary Alan Johnson writing on Sunday [In The Observer - see full article below] about the national polyclinics/GP surgeries controversy which has been escalating all week, categorically pledged: 'No current GP practices will be closed, as the new services will be in addition to existing ones and come with extra money.'

This effectively condemns the highly controversial and unpopular Haringey PCT '10 year strategy' to oblivion, saving the 45 local surgeries (out of Haringey's total of 60) facing closure. Haringey's closure programme, as outlined in the '10 year Primary Care Strategy' adopted by Haringey PCT's Board on May 21st, seems to have been the worst example in the whole of the UK, with nearly half of the entire total of threatened London closures.

'Thanks to the fast growing protests by campaigners, patients and doctors in Haringey and across the country the Government has now backed down. We call on Haringey PCT to withdraw and rethink their highly controversial strategy, and on all GPs and patients to demand guarantees that their surgeries will be removed from the PCT's obsolete closure programme.'

Dave Morris - Stop Haringey Health Cuts Coalition, Secretary

Note: Haringey Health campaigners are planning a public event on the 60th anniversary of the founding of the NHS - Sat July 5th, 2pm-6pm. They will celebrating the history of the NHS and warning of the need to defend its principles and facilities. The event includes a range of speakers and the showing of the shocking and hilarious documentary 'SiCKO' by Michael Moore about the scandalous state of healthcare in the USA. At the Old British Legion (now renamed 'Tottenham Chances'), 399 Tottenham High Rd, N17

---

'No current GP practices will be closed - I totally reject the claim that we are cutting services' - Alan Johnson - the Health Secretary Sunday June 8 2008, The Observer

We are coming up to the 60th anniversary of the NHS, a landmark event which enables us to think about what makes the service so special and what we want it to provide for us in the future.

Soon we will publish our vision for the next decade, the Next Stage Review, led by the eminent surgeon Lord Darzi. Through an NHS constitution we will ensure that patient rights, including to information, redress and choice, ensure we never return to the sub-standard care all too common in the health service we inherited 11 years ago.

We can at last see that all the staffs' efforts to defeat the long waiting lists are paying off. Soon patients will benefit from changes that will see GPs offering evening and weekend opening. What is so dismaying is the way in which our plans for primary care and GP services have been the subject of gross misrepresentation. The Tories are claiming that our plans mean the closure of 1,700 surgeries. There is nothing further from the truth and it is extremely disappointing that the BMA would speak in equally lurid and inaccurate terms.

Rather than let these untruths prevail, I want to be clear about what healthcare staff are doing to improve family doctor services across the country. Far from reducing the provision of GP services, we are increasing and enhancing them. We are already investing £250m in 100 new GP practices and 150 GP-led centres. This has improved access for millions of patients but in too many areas the number of GPs remains well below the national average and too many working families struggle to take time off work for a GP appointment.

We want to create GP-run health centres that open from eight till eight, seven days a week. No current GP practices will be closed, as the new services will be in addition to existing ones and come with extra money. Most important, our 150 GP-run health centres will offer patients appointments and walk-in services without registration, so families can make use of them while they remain registered with their existing GP.

In some major cities, such as London, clinicians and managers want to go further than GP-run health centres and develop polyclinics - centres that offer an extended range of treatments. That might be achieved by bringing several GPs into a single building or they may be 'virtual', with GPs in their existing practices collaborating more closely. I will insist that such decisions are taken in consultation with local people and driven by clinical evidence of what works. Controversy may well be caused by some GPs who fear greater choice for patients, worried that they themselves will lose out. But we have made clear that they are not going to lose funding in this process.

I reject totally the inaccurate claim that we are cutting or closing services. Having spent years opposing our investment in health, the Tories are now opposing proposals to extend primary care services.

Their plans would make it harder to see a GP. The scaremongering and misleading claims we have seen from the Tories, and sadly from the BMA, should have no place in the crucial debate about our health service. The NHS is too important for that.