IT has come to my knowledge that the government is making every Primary Care Trust open a new general practice provided by an alternative provider of medical services.
I believe that these practices are expected to be run by private companies, and the doctors employed by them may well be their employees, and therefore answerable to their shareholders, not the NHS.
I am therefore worried that a private general p
ractice will have the interests of its shareholders at heart more than its patients.
I am also worried that they will use doctors with less training, and who have no knowledge of a patient's previous medical history, thus reducing the quality of care for those patients.
There is also the question of funding, which I believe will be diverted from practices like my own to these private ones.
I am well aware that all current GPs are independent contractors, but believe that they are an integrated part of the NHS, and therefore put the interests of their patients at the heart of their work, which is something I feel a private company would not do.
Mr I White
High Street
Hatfield Editor's Note: Doncaster PCT has said that GPs will be able to tender for the contract to run the new centre.The full article contains 215 words and appears in n/a newspaper.
