Supermarkets could house new NHS general practices, under government plans to boost access to primary care in some of the United Kingdom's most deprived areas.
The health secretary, Patricia Hewitt, said that Hartlepool, County Durham, Ashfield, and Great Yarmouth will be the first areas to gain extra family practices, walk-in centres, and minor injuries units located in private businesses.
Private health firms, GPs, and social enterprises will be free to bid for the contracts with primary care trusts (PCTs), which could include early morning, evening, and weekend clinics, under the “fairness in primary care” procurement programme. Contracts will run for an initial five years, “with the potential to extend for longer.”
Mrs Hewitt said, “Thousands of NHS patients who would have otherwise found it difficult seeing a GP will benefit from new deals between the NHS and new providers.”
Hamish Meldrum, chairman of the BMA's General Practitioners Committee, said, “Existing GPs have a cost effective track record of providing top quality services for patients. They must be allowed to bid for the new resources on an equal footing with newcomers, such as private providers.
“What we don't want to see is any attempt to use this announcement as a backdoor way of privatising the NHS.”
All of the four areas in the first wave of the programme have considerably fewer GPs than the national average of 57.9 per 100 000 people (Great Yarmouth and Waveney PCT has 48.5; Hartlepool PCT has 47.5; County Durham PCT has 46.5; and Nottinghamshire County Teaching PCT has 43.6).
Advertisements inviting bids to provide the new services will appear by the end of March. Services are expected to open to patients by the end of 2007.
Mrs Hewitt's announcement was aimed to coincide with publication of a policy review document from the Prime Minister's Delivery Unit outlining how public services, including healthcare, could progress in future by “tackling social exclusion” and “expanding patient choice.”
The policy review stressed the need for expanding opening hours for GP services. It noted that nine out of 10 attendees at a recent policy review forum said they wanted to be able to access public services, such as GP surgeries, at evenings and weekends even if that meant shorter opening hours on weekdays.
A Boots chemist shop in Poole already rents space to a GP clinic. Supermarkets or high street chains bidding in this new round of contacts are expected to operate in a similar way. A BMA spokeswoman noted, however, that this general practice in Poole does not offer evening or weekend services.
In January last year, a report by the Institute for Public Policy Research warned that many of the most deprived areas had the poorest health records and also the fewest GPs. It called for more health services to be available in places such as supermarkets to reduce the workload of emergency departments.
Equitable Choices for Health is available at www.ippr.org/publicationsandreports.