Government Aims to Axe 2000 Incompetent NHS GP Surgeries

By: N_Walayat

In an attempt to provide competent GP healthcare services, the government is planning to proceed with the first phase of the creation of 150 super surgeries across Britain.

Currently the NHS and GP Surgeries discriminate against men and those living within deprived wards, which comprises more than 60% of the UK population. Therefore barely 40% of the UK population is receiving competent GP surgery services and NHS hospital healthcare. This despite a tripling in the NHS budget which is increasingly seen by the voters as money wasted.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has warned health authorities to stop discriminating against men, which has resulted in men being more than twice as likely to die from the same cancers as women.

Typically GP services that have cut back on hours available despite a tripling in pay tend to make it difficult for working men to arrange an appointment as the appointment systems are designed to be erratic to suit increasingly part-time GP's.

The consequences of this discrimination is that men die some 5 years before women. The House of Commons health select committee inquiry will hear evidence of the discrimination against men by the NHS next month.

The Governments top cancer expert recently warned that GP's are failing to diagnose cancer symptoms in an interview with the Observer.

"Patients are dying of cancer because GP's are failing to identify their symptoms, the government's top cancer expert has warned. Professor Mike Richards said botched diagnoses were now 'a significant concern'. 'Ultimately it can mean that the cancer has progressed to a stage where it can't be cured,' he said. Failed diagnoses also meant that, when cancers were eventually spotted, particularly aggressive treatments, such as chemotherapy or surgery, had to be used. 'That could be a mastectomy rather than perhaps a breast conserving operation,' http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/....

The other group discriminated against are those living within deprived wards. The primary reason for this is that incompetent GP's tend to cluster together within these surgeries and hence provide substandard healthcare to those who are the least able to complain against poor healthcare services. This has lead to a near third world level of life expectancy amongst many deprived wards of as much as 17 years less. This was recently highlighted by the Liberal Democrats Leader Nick Clegg who voiced the shocking difference in life expectancy within his own city of Sheffield between affluent wards such as Fullwood and deprived wards such as Darnall.

Unfortunately the NHS is by design bureaucratic and any tinkering at the edges is unlikely to make any significant difference, the only real solution is to introduce market forces where patients are able to take themselves for diagnoses and treatment to nationally recognised competent healthcare providers. The current system forces patients to register within their GP catchment area therefore limited to a choice of just 1 or 2 GP's, and highly likely that GP surgeries within affluent wards will refuse their requests for registration and refer the patient back to the under performing GP surgeries within deprived wards.

An recent opinion poll amongst 156,000 NHS staff found that patient care is not a top priority for the NHS. This is further evidence, if it were needed that the propaganda of free at the point of delivery health care service is increasingly seen as free but worthless at the point of delivery health service.

The Super surgeries are a possible solution, however at 150 nationwide, this number needs to be expanded on tenfold to be able to address the glaring healthcare deficiency. GP surgeries under threat of being axed have begun letter writing scare tactic campaigns to local residents in many areas of the country. Perhaps if they had provided competent healthcare in the first place then the current situation would not arise.

The Market Oracle in the interest of public safety is investigating the possibilities of the creation of an independent online GP surgery evaluation service for all UK patients to contribute towards, so as enable patients to register themselves with GP's that are able to perform competent diagnoses.

By Nadeem Walayat

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