The government is forcing PCTs to merge single-GP practices on the grounds of cost efficiency and convenience. In one such case in Danbury, Essex, the local PCT learned from a patient consultation that there was an overwhelming (95%) choice to retain a single-GP surgery. However six months after a new single GP was appointed to the practice, it was merged with a much larger one and patients were given less than a month’s notice of the merger and no further consultation. Private Eye magazine facetiously declared: “As with the rest of the NHS, it seems that patients are free to choose whatever they wish, so long as it is what the government has chosen for them.”
Source:
Doing the Rounds, Private Eye, no. 1149, 6-19 January 2006.
