Promoting the interests, aspirations and welfare of general practitioners in North and South Essex

Support your Surgery Campaign

All GPs should by now have received a letter from Laurence Buckman, Chairman of the GPC, dated 8^th May 2008 regarding the BMA’s forthcoming Support Your Surgery Campaign.  The campaign is part of the BMA’s wider communication strategy and is aimed at raising public awareness about the threat that Government policy poses to the current model of patient-centred general practice.

Early in the week commencing 19^th May, practices will receive a Support Your Surgery Campaign Pack.  The pack will contain a petition, campaign posters and stickers for display in surgeries.  The centrepiece of the campaign will be a nationwide petition which it is intended will be presented to the Prime Minister on 12^th June.

Wording of the Petition

In the 60^th year of NHS general practice, we urge the Government to:

Continue to support our existing NHS GP surgeries.

Improve services to patients by further investment in existing GP surgeries.

We also urge the Government to halt its plans to promote the use of commercial companies in general practice because this risks destabilising our local surgeries and threatens the comprehensive, high quality care we receive from our GPs.  We don’t want public funding to move from GP practices to commercial companies who are accountable primarily to shareholders rather than patients.  We want to be treated by GPs who see us as patients, not as customers.

The LMCs hope that all practices will actively support the BMA campaign by using the campaign packs provided.  It is worth remembering that the importance of arranging a co-ordinated publicity campaign aimed at increasing public awareness of the threat posed to the NHS by back door privatisation was raised by delegates at all three meetings in Essex prior to the GP Poll.  Extended Opening Hours has not and never will be the real issue!  The threat is the destruction of high quality, patient friendly general practice and its replacement by large corporations.

The DH and PCTs have an unhealthy obsession with the Choice agenda and appear to have a genuine belief that a skewed market place and the destabilisation of general practice as patients know it can be justified on the basis of informed patient choice.  The irony is in the word informed!  What is currently being proposed is in most cases unnecessary, will divert resources away from existing NHS provision based on need and in the long term is unsustainable.  It is increasingly evident that patients are not being informed that in a system based on finite resources an inevitable consequence of the opening of expensive, unwarranted Darzi Health Centres will be the closure of existing practices that offer high levels of quality, value for money, continuity of care and patient advocacy.

In an NHS with a management culture predominantly based on command, control and unreasonableness, practices are one of a dwindling number of organisations that are able and willing to help patients better understand the implications for them and their families of what is being proposed.  All practices are therefore strongly encouraged to participate in the BMA campaign and help prevent the destruction of the infrastructure that has supported the delivery of high quality primary care for the last sixty years.

Further information is available on the Support Your Surgery Website