GPs face backlash warns new RCGP chair

GPs have been warned that they may face demonstrations outside their surgeries and searching questions about their high salaries.

The warning came as part of an outspoken attack on government health policy by the new chair of the Royal College of GPs.

In a Saturday interview with the Guardian the new leader of the Royal College of GPs, Dr Clare Gerada, made an outspoken attack on the government’s health care reforms, saying the NHS will not survive intact.

By taking on the role of commissioners of services GPs will be responsible for rationing decisions, and patients denied drugs or surgery for their ailments may understandably vent their frustrations on well paid GPs, Dr Gerada told the Guardian.

She warned that making GPs the “new rationers” of the NHS could ruin the long-established bonds of trust between them and their patients.

"I think it is the end of the NHS as we currently know it, which is a national, unified health service, with central policies and central planning, in the way that [Aneurin] Bevan imagined," said Dr Gerada.

"At worst, the negative impact for GPs could be patients lobbying outside their front door, saying, ‘You’ve got a nice BMW car but you will not allow me to have this cytotoxic drug that will give me three more months of life,’” Dr Gerada told the Guardian.

"I’m concerned that my profession, GPs, will be exposed to lobbying by patients, patient groups and the pharma industry to fund or commission their bit of the service. There could be letters from MPs and patient groups, and begging letters from patients."

The new RCGP chair also criticised government’s the coalition transfer responsibility for rationing access to treatment from the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) and PCTs to GPs in England from 2013.

Link

The Guardian