20.10.11
NHS will be like a ‘budget airline’ – Gerada
The chair of the Royal College of GPs, Dr Clare Gerada, believes that the health reforms have the potential to damage relationships between GPs and their patients and will allow richer patients to ‘muscle in’ on treatments.
Giving GPs control over health budgets will force them to choose between providing sick patients with treatment and meeting financial targets, she argues, which will diminish trust in GPs.
Speaking at ‘Diversity in Practice’, the Annual Primary Care Conference which starts today in Liverpool, Gerada will say: “We must not risk long-term benefits being sacrificed in favour of short-term savings. How soon will it be, for example, before we stop referring for cochlear implants? An expensive intervention, but one that, in the long term, saves enormous amounts of public money. But not a saving from our budget. How long before we find ourselves injecting a patient's knee joint at Injections-R-us PLC instead of referring to an orthopaedic surgeon for a knee replacement?
“I worry we're heading towards a situation where healthcare will be like a budget airline. There'll be two queues: one for those who can afford to pay, and another for those who can't. Seats will be limited to those who muscle in first.”
However, a Department of Health spokesperson said: “Talk of budget airlines is nonsense. In the new NHS, everyone will fly first class. Quality will improve as both patients and frontline staff are able to make choices. We have already amended the health and social care bill to make sure clinical commissioning groups are accountable … and each one will have a governing body that meets in public.”
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