The Observer has revealed that profit-driven firms are squeezing traditional GPs out of running family doctor services because of rules that NHS bosses and ministers both believe harm patient care.
The “creeping privatisation” of general practice, with private companies being handed contracts ahead of groups of GPs, has been attacked by doctors, MPs and campaigners.
There are demands to repeal parts of the coalition government’s controversial Health and Social Care Act 2012, so that NHS clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) are no longer forced to tender for any contract worth more than £615,000.
Family doctors are angry that they must compete against commercial interests to run appointments in the evenings and at weekends, sessions provided to fulfil pledges to make the NHS a seven-day service.
Full story in The Guardian, 7 October 2018
