NHS Neglect: £20 to See Your Doctor In The Evening (Bring Wine)
IS this the beginning of the end of the NHS as we know it?
A group of family doctors is ready to propose a fee of £20 to be charged for evening or weekend appointments. Fears are rising that the founding principles of our health service are set to be fatally undermined.
The £20 charge, which will be proposed at an upcoming British Medical conference, is in response to recent calls for family doctors to justify their hefty salaries, which have jumped to an average of £106,000 per annum.
In 2004, new GP contracts saw 90 per cent of family doctors opt out of providing care in the evenings, at weekend and on Bank Holidays. But with agency doctors and local hospital filling the gaps, patients are growing increasingly unhappy at not being able to access their own GP.
Michael Summers, of the Patients Association, says: “The conditions that people suffer from out of hours are just the same as those they suffer from during the day. Why should they have a second-rate service? I have been campaigning for some time for the out-of-hours service to be overhauled. People will die otherwise.” (Presumably Summers isn’t threatening to murder people himself if he doesn’t get his way.)
However, Andrew Green, a Yorkshire GP, is all for the new charge. He tells us: “They are going to be people in employment, almost by definition, and to ask them to bear the extra costs seems reasonable. I do not think a fee of £15 to £20 would be exorbitant. This should not be paid for from general taxation.”
But don’t we pay for the doctor through tax already?
Posted: 4th, June 2007 | In: Money Comments (2) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink
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June 4th, 2007 at 3:01 pm
GPs were forced to give up RESPONSIBILITY for out of hours by the governments over exacting “standards” such as response time to answering the phone/recording all calls etc - technically impossible for the single handed or small group of doctors. This responsibility was taken by the Primary Care Trusts at a personal cost of £6.000 to each GP.
Prior to the change in RESPONSIBILITY the service was provided by Co-operatives of local GPs who were paid about £23 per hour. Many of these same GPs continue to provide the medical cover for the co-operatives -but for a commercial rate of pay. All doctors working for out of hours providers have to be fully trained, qualified GPs -so I do not see what the problem is as nothing has changed in the way out of hours cover is provided.
If GPs are to extend their opening - the number of doctors available at any one time will be reduced -reducing the choice of doctor for the patient. Already elderly patients are having to make very early or late appointments to see the doctor of their choice rather than having an appointment in the late morning or early afternoon.
June 4th, 2007 at 10:59 am
This is the medical version of paying again for rubbish to be taken away. I’m in full agreement that if people choose to not attend a prebooked appt then they are charged, but I cannot understand why people must be charged to be seen in the evening.
My vet runs 3 surgeries a day, and emergency appts during the working week, and they all cost the same which ever time one attends. There is no extra charge for the pm one, which is usually the busiest.