23.05.12
GPs raise NHS rationing concerns
Patients needing knee and hip operations are having to wait longer due to NHS rationing, the BMA has stated, with some minor treatments being denied altogether. The GPs argue that the drive to make £20bn savings by 2015 is to blame.
Speaking ahead of the two-day conference, Dr Richard Vautrey, deputy chairman of the BMA’s GPs committee, said: “Most people understand the NHS is not a bottomless pit and there are limitations to what can be done.
“But GPs are increasingly getting worried about rationing. There are huge variations in what can and can't be provided from place to place.
“We are also seeing more restrictions on when we can refer patients. It means people needing things such as hip and knee replacements wait longer and suffer unnecessarily.”
The GPs are also concerned about the development of CCGs occurring without the involvement of doctors.
Dr Laurence Buckman, chairman of the committee, warns: “As the NHS in all four countries lurches towards the buffers of financial and operational meltdown, we find that instead of the clear thinking that the NHS desperately needs right now we have regulation, bullying micromanagement and dissipated effort.
“CCGs are ‘membership organisations’ as we keep on being told, they are our creatures not just another version of the PCTs they replace. GPs should be telling them what to do, not the other way round. We were told it was going to be different…the Government needs to make it so.”
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