I have just returned from a meeting in Coventry where David Cameron spoke to General Practice Doctors and Patients including a number of people from Rugby about the Government's proposals to introduce Polyclinics . It's clear that many in the profession are totally opposed to this idea to introduce large practices of up to 25 GPs where the doctor/patient link will be broken, where many patients, particularly the elderly and the young, will have to travel longer distances, and where the management will be undertaken by business rather than the doctors themselves. I was impressed by one doctor who spoke of himself as a "patients advocate", a role he felt would be lost in a larger, more impersonal organisation and another who felt that the imposition of Polyclinics would lead to many GPs seeking work outside the UK.In Rugby we have much to fear from these proposals. There is already a threat to our local hospital from the moving of more specialist services to larger regional hospitals; now this proposal seeks to move more low level and routine services from the local hospital to the clinic. Time after time Rugby people have shown that they want to retain as many services as are feasable at their local hospital. We will need to win this part of the argument as part of our campaign to defend St Cross.
