Lee Scott

Conservative Party | Ilford North

'View from the House'

17 July 2009

To The Editor, Ilford Recorder

I have been approached by a number of local doctors and their patients who have expressed their concerns at plans to expand polyclinics at the expense of our GP provision. To make my own view clear, I am not opposed to polyclinics in principle. They should be established where they have the confidence and support of local patients and doctors. They must not be imposed as the latest structural re-organisation of the NHS.

Polyclinics may mean that patients must travel further to see a doctor and to get treatment. Care could be impersonal as it may be difficult to establish a doctor patient relationship. In addition there may be a loss of continuity of that care over a course of treatments.
GPs are senior professionals and politicians should not be trying to micro-managing them or dictating where they should work. We need to be more concerned in the health outcomes for patients rather than the processes used to get there. In my view patients should have better opportunity to select their GP and to exercise real choices over their treatment and care.

I was shocked to learn that Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust are closing a 31 bed ward at King George Hospital. If they have cleared the patient waiting lists axing the ward might make sense but we all know they have not. This is all about saving money. It emerged last week in response to a parliamentary question that the trust has a cumulative deficit at 31 March 2009 of more than £103 million.

One of the causes for this enormous deficit is the cost of paying out compensation to patients under the NHSLA's Clinical Negligence Scheme. In three years more that £23 million was used to cover these costs. The level of the compensation will be justified by the nature of each individual case. Last week it was reported that as much as £2.4 million will be paid out to settle a single case. I believe that much more needs to be done to reduce the need for such payments by reducing clinical negligence.