The British Labour party gets desperate

Tony Blair is to invite retail chains including Tesco, Virgin and Boots to bid to run GP surgeries on behalf of the NHS with contracts worth 225 million pounds over five years. GPs will be encouraged to run clinics at breakfast time and in the early evening in poor areas where conventional family doctors have been reluctant to practise. Blair’s announcement, to be made tomorrow, is intended to ensure Gordon Brown carries on his reforms of the NHS after Blair leaves Downing Street. The prime minister will respond to Tory claims that he has left the NHS in “crisis” by publishing his ideas for “progressive” reform of public services. He will allow GPs to link up with pharmacies and supermarket drug counters by sharing electronic patient records.

In an indication that he is signed up to the scheme, the chancellor will announce measures to expand the use of “community pharmacies” for routine treatments and tests. Tomorrow Blair will publish the first of six policy review papers, on public services, in an effort to shift the emphasis away from producers to consumers. Patricia Hewitt, the health secretary, will name the first towns to take part in the new programme. Extra family practices, walk-in centres and minor injuries units will be opened in Hartlepool, Durham, Mansfield and Great Yarmouth. Other areas will join the programme in the coming months. Contracts for the new services will run for an initial five years, with the possibility of extension.

Although there is no national shortage of GPs, there are many “underdoctored” areas in England and Wales. The four areas involved in the first wave have significantly fewer GPs per person than the national average of 57.9 GPs per 100,000 people. The programme aims to attract a broad range of providers, from existing entrepreneurial GPs to social enterprises and FTSE-100 companies. Some extra GPs and nurses will be recruited for up to 30 health blackspots to tackle local shortages of doctors.

David Cameron will also focus on the NHS in a speech to the Conservative party’s spring forum in Nottingham today. He is expected to say: “It used to be said that Labour were the party of the NHS. Not any more. Labour are the party that is undermining the health service. “There’s a simple reason why. It’s not because they don’t care. But it is because of their values and philosophy: Labour’s mania for controlling and directing things from the centre; Labour’s pessimism about human nature; Labour’s belief that if people aren’t told what to do, they’ll do the wrong thing. Labour just don’t trust people.”

Thousands of doctors staged marches in London and Glasgow yesterday to protest at reforms to the system of medical training. They accuse the government of trying to “disempower and degrade” the profession.

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Junior doctor selection chaos will ‘block medical progress in Britain’

The chaotic selection system for junior doctors is threatening British medical science as well as leaving thousands of trained doctors without jobs, leading clinical researchers said yesterday. The online application process for specialist training posts will lead to a shortage of medically qualified scientists, because it does not give credit to the academic and research achievements of junior doctors, senior scientists said. The Medical Training Application Service (MTAS), which puts candidates on shortlists for specialist jobs by computer, using a rigid scoring system, has been denounced as unfair by the British Medical Association. Junior doctors and consultants have called for it to be suspended.

The system has left more than 30,000 qualified junior doctors competing for 22,000 jobs, and consultants have refused to interview candidates because they regard the shortlisting process as unfair. Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, the Health Minister, was forced to order a review of the system last week, and thousands of doctors are expected to join protest marches in London and Glasgow tomorrow. Further criticism of MTAS has come from medical research groups, who said that the “dumbed-down” method of selecting the best candidates for specialist training paid “scant regard” to the needs of clinical research. The shortlisting system did not take account of junior doctors’ academic achievements or published research, it was claimed. This made it impossible to ensure that the brightest doctors were given appropriate posts.

Professor John Bell, president of the Academy of Medical Sciences, and Professor Sir John Tooke, chairman of the Council of Heads of Medical Schools, yesterday wrote an open letter to the British Medical Journal condemning the reforms. “Academic trainees — those doctors wishing to pursue careers which encompass research as well as patient care — have been particularly badly affected by the decision to anonymise applications and deprive the assessors of details of previous clinical and research experience,” they said. “Without a scientifically informed and research-orientated medical workforce throughout the country, the Government’s vision of the UK as a world-class centre for bio-medical research and health-care cannot be realised.”

A poll of more than 1,700 people, including more than 400 consultants, found that most wanted the scheme to be suspended or scrapped. Morris Brown, Professor of Clinical Pharmacology at the University of Cambridge, who organised the survey, said that the results showed that the Government’s review did not go far enough. “Many doctors that preferred to be a physician, for instance, were allocated instead to interviews in surgery or general practice, and would not receive a second chance. Those rejected altogether may not find any of their preferred options available in the second round,” he said. “All but 205 and 241 respondents, respectively, want the first and second rounds of interviews aborted now.” He said that all but 119 respondents believed that the architects of the NHS Modernising Medical Careers programme should resign

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL hospitals and health insurance schemes should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the very poor and minimal regulation. Both Australia and Sweden have large private sector health systems with government reimbursement for privately-provided services so can a purely private system with some level of government reimbursement or insurance for the poor be so hard to do?

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