Around 1.2 million people signed a petition calling for existing general practices in England to be protected in the face of government plans to create large health centres known as polyclinics.
Relations between the government and the BMA have grown increasingly bitter over the issue of polyclinics, prompting the health secretary to accuse doctors’ leaders of lying and scaremongering (BMJ 2008;336:1328, 14 Jun, doi: 10.1136/bmj.39608.577639.DB).
The BMA handed in the petition to the prime minister last week as part of its “support your surgery” campaign. The petition asks Gordon Brown to continue to support existing NHS general practices, to improve services through further investment, and to halt plans to promote the use of commercial companies in general practice.
In a speech at last week’s local medical committees conference, organised by the BMA, Laurence Buckman, chairman of the BMA’s General Practitioners Committee, said that the petition would “deliver a stark message to the prime minister.”
Dr Buckman said, “My message to Gordon Brown is this: whatever you think of GPs, take note of what your electorate thinks. Work with us to improve the service, not against us, and ignore at your peril the wishes of the most important people in the NHS, the patients.”
As part of health minister Ara Darzi’s ongoing review of the NHS every primary care trust in England will be expected to have a new GP led health centre (polyclinic). The BMA is worried that the private sector is being encouraged to bid to run these new centres and does not believe that the bidding process will be fair.
The government has responded angrily. In The Observer newspaper (8 June, p 19) the health secretary, Alan Johnson, accused the BMA of lying when it claimed that many GPs’ surgeries would close to make way for polyclinics. Mr Johnson criticised the BMA for scaremongering and peddling “untruths” over the plans and said that there had been “gross misrepresentation” of the government’s plans.
Michael Dixon, chairman of the NHS Alliance, which represents primary care health professionals, had mixed feelings. “Polyclinics have been lost in translation,” he said. “The polyclinic, implemented in the right way, is good. The right way means general practices locally deciding to integrate their services. There has to be willingness from doctors and local people.
“The BMA and patients are afraid that they might be losing the good bits of general practice—and the way that polyclinics have been implemented in some places means they have got a point.”
Steve Field, chairman of the Royal College of General Practitioners, also speaking at the local medical committees conference, condemned the government’s plans for moving primary care towards “Martini style healthcare—any time, anywhere, any doctor—which is not good for patients.
“GPs and patients must be involved in the planning, and we cannot afford for existing high quality GP practices to be destabilised,” he said.