Mounting GP resistance to the Government's polyclinic plans has reached a crescendo.

Lord Darzi's new polyclinics have been touted as the next big thing in the NHS - offering multiple primary care services all under one roof.

But GPs fear the prospect of their practices being herded like sheep into new “super-surgeries”. What's more, polyclinics will be instructed to poach patients from practices, according to official government documents obtained by Pulse (April 30).

At the Scottish local medical committees (LMCs) conference, GPs called for the immediate resignation of Lord Darzi, the Health Minister - who mooted the idea of polyclinics in his 2007 review of the NHS.

Assessors wreathed in secrecy

Research assessment exercises are now so secretive that academics are using the Freedom of Information Act to view assessors' reports

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Dr John Ip, of Greater Glasgow and Clyde LMC, told the conference that Darzi is hellbent on running down general practice and should be ashamed of himself “for becoming Gordon Brown's puppet”, GP (May 2) reports.

Meanwhile, the Royal College of Nursing has attacked the Tories for cosying up to the medical profession by backing doctors' opposition to plans for polyclinics.

Lynn Young, the RCN primary care adviser, accuses them of jumping on the bandwagon and “trying to seduce GPs”, Nursing Standard (April 30) reports.

In reality, Ms Young says polyclinics could improve patient outcomes in impoverished areas that have a shortage of GPs and practice nurses, who work at polyclinics, may in fact receive better pay, training and conditions than they do at GP surgeries.

Lender and a borrower be

Spend a lifetime in an isolated cave with a gnarled soothsayer and an abacus and you may be able to make sense of the following.

Surrey and Sussex Healthcare Trust is “financially challenged” and has been baled out by a Department of Health (DH) loan of £56 million.

To help pay back the loan, says Health Service Journal (May 1), the trust has been given £34 million, which by some strange alchemy means that it can pay back what it owes the DH in three years rather than 25.

And the source of the £34 million? Why, none other than the NHS. So just to be clear, one part of the NHS borrows money from another to pay back the department that funds them both.

Clear as mud.

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