anneiskeepingbusy

Today, I am keeping busy a) saying thank you the NHS, which is 66 years old today, and b) writing a letter to NHS England, protesting about the closure of the Soho Square General Practice. Dr Cheung and Dr Brassy have been our lovely and good GPs since we moved back to London 13 years ago. Those of you who know me will be aware that, in my case, this has been no easy task as I’ve been up and down to the doctors a fair amount with both real and bonkers stuff. They have always treated me with care, respect and understanding – and I’ve never had to pay.

Then we get a letter last week saying that the “Central London Community Healthcare NHS Trust has notified NHS England of their intention to resign the GP contract for the Soho Square General Practice.” What does this even mean? The letter doesn’t bother to actually name the doctors involved – I guess it’s easier to think of this as a contract rather than as two real doctors who treat real people.

Patients were not consulted during the decision making process. Nor, if the accounts in the local press are to be believed, were the doctors or local councillors. Now we are being offered a choice of “dispersal” – finding another doctor – or asking NHS England to find a new GP or suitable organisation to provide health services – again, whatever that means.

This is all very confusing, particularly as there is another GP practice in the same building which is not impacted by this decision. I say decision, but we have been given no reason at all for the closure, aside from this resigning the contract business. A CLCH spokesperson told the West End Extra that this was not about cost cutting but rather that the GP service “doesn’t fit in with the the objectives of our business plan.”

My rather obvious question: how can cutting GP services be an objective of a community healthcare trust? If this is about cuts, please tell us.

What will happen to the large number of  elderly Chinese patients who use this practice because of the Chinese speaking doctor and staff? Or course, they may not yet know about the closure because my letter says that if you want a copy in Chinese you have to go the GP surgery to collect one.

Today is the 66th birthday of the NHS. You may have seen many tweets about this, people saying thank you for the amazing things the NHS have done for them. Look at #thankyounhs to see what great things people are saying.

I don’t want to become an NHS basher in any way – I love the twitter account @butnhs (big up the NHS) which posts positive NHS stories and accounts – and I don’t have enough information to know what the closure of the Soho Practice is really all about. What I do know is that the NHS is something we need to fight for. You’ll have heard it before, but it’s really true – we won’t know what we’ve lost until we wake up one morning and our healthcare is no longer free at the point of delivery but rather a horrible hotchpotch of insurance/profit making big corporations who talk about business plans and forget to name actual doctors.