Let Struggling Gp Surgeries Fail, Says Nhs England Letter

[mikey4444]

"The NHS is safe in our hands"

Really ?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-37617114

[woofgang]

GP’s are contractors, not NHS employees. Its up to them how they run their practicers, what of the money they have got coming in they plough back into the practice and what they take as salary. If there are surgeries who are doing a bad job for patients, why not open the way for a better service to be offered?

[mikey4444]

Woofy.....the GP's practise IS the NHS as far as most people are concerned. They couldn't give a fig where the money comes from to pay their Doctor.

If a GP's practise closes in your local area, you are up something creek without a paddle, as has already happened. After all, its the same as it has been for many years now, when it comes to NHS Dentists.

Your Family Doctor is the first point of contact and a central plank of the NHS, and they need to be available for all. We have already seen what has happened with the Casualty Units in our Hospitals, when people can't get to see their GP.

This is totally unacceptable, which is why NHS England is trying to play down the crisis.

[fiction-factory]

The doctors will still exist though Mikey- it'll be the practice that goes not the doctors. Other practices may open or existing ones may expand. I often see new large practices opening and there are some huge centres opening

[naomi24]

"The NHS is safe in our hands"?

What does that have to do with an NHS England letter?

[woofgang]

mikey, maybe they should start giving a fig?

[fiction-factory]

I think another part of the reasoning behind he idea is that it may encourage some of the failing ones to up their game

[Old_Geezer]

Why would a new practice replace a struggling one and do better ? Especially if it has the same doctors ? If one is closed it means that there is no local surgery for local people, and folk have to go miles to the nearest one even if they can get on the list there.

Same sort of thing happened with bank branches. They got closed and no one cared about the trek the old and frail (not to mention everyone else) had to make to get to the bank.

These days service is not something the public can expect. The value of community is ignored as irrelevant. Service falls into last place whist efficiency and low cost reign supreme.

[Baldric]

Badly managed local Practices, maybe they should be allowed to fail and be replaced by those who can manage themselves successfully. The NHS is not a charity after all.

[fiction-factory]

Well, new businesses sometimes come along and replace failing ones. Sometimes it just needs some fresh ideas, some smarter thinking or a bit more drive/energy.
I doubt this will become official policy though

[woofgang]

better management of resource OG.

[Old_Geezer]

I suspect that is probably wishful thinking Woofie. There would be no instant takeover. If the doctors still exist that implies the some ones are likely to be trying to manage the resource.

(In any case doctors should be concentrating on medicine not running budgets. The system is flawed.)

[ladybirder]

Mikey our local surgery was shut down by the Care Quality Commission last year. I can't think of one good thing to say about that surgery and neither could anyone else. It couldn't even manage a 1* rating on the NHS site. It was open one day and closed the next. We were all sent across the road to the nearest practice which somehow, and brilliantly, rose to the challenge by taking on all of us who wanted to register and that was a heck of a lot. It was the best thing that could have happened as our new surgery is clean, efficient, has smiling polite receptionists and the place is a model of how a GPs' practice should be run.
So no way were we up the creek without a paddle as you say, in fact we are all going along swimmingly.

[woofgang]

OG, someone has to run the budget. Practices usually employ a practice manager to do it.

[youngmafbog]

So I assume you would prefer to continue propping up the rubbish then Mickey?

[jno]

what if the choice is between rubbish or none, ymb?

When my doctor (who wasn't rubbish) retired, nobody bought her practice. We just got shifted to other practices that were overworked already. That's how "leaving it to the market" works. The "oh, but someone who manages a practice better will come along" answer remains an aspiration.

[Bathsheba]

Well I can't complain, was diagnosed in mid-May, + operated on at end of June.

Baths
x x x

[jno]

Baths, yes, I think the NHS is pretty good with serious illness. It's at the GP end of things it's wobbly.

[cupotee2]

All the GPs at our surgery resigned best part of 2 years ago. Since then we have no regular GPs but locums...the practice is the only one in the area accepting new patients!! When they already had 12000 on the books.

No other surgery will accept patients from our surgery so were between a rock and a hard place.

Getting an appointment is like winning the lottery..

As of next Monday, the biggest hospital nearby is not accepting everyone who turns up at a&e. All patients will be accessed with some being sent on their way.

"The NHS is safe in our hands" I'm not so sure!!

[cupotee2]

I meant to add since the GPs resignation we have been taken over by 2 different "Providers"..the first didn't work out so now Virgin Care has taken over. Nothings changed from the other provider

[Cloverjo]

Virgin Care? Gosh, he's getting everywhere.