
The NHS at 60: Making Primary Care Fairer
3rd July 2008
As part of Labour’s mission to build a more prosperous and fairer country, in the 60th anniversary year of the NHS, the government has published plans to widen access and increase choice in Primary Care (i.e. basically, the non-hospital part of the NHS). Over 90% of all contacts with the National Health Service take place outside hospital, with family doctors, community nurses, pharmacists, and a range of other health professionals.
The plans underline the central role primary and community care services play in keeping people healthy, preventing illness, and promoting healthy life styles; as well as tackling variations in health and well-being.
Launching the Primary & Community Care plan, Labour’s Health Services Minister Ben Bradshaw MP said:
“Our NHS primary and community care services are highly valued by patients and the public – for the personal continuity of care they provide and for their strong ties with local communities. As the NHS turns 60 this year, we need to build on these strengths and to raise our ambitions looking to the future.
“People tell us that they want to be more involved in decisions about their health care and that primary and community care should be more individual, convenient and joined up. Change will only come from listening more closely to what patients tell us, responding to that and giving them more choice and say over their healthcare.
“Our vision for primary care will protect the highly popular and effective system of registering with a local GP, but give family doctors a stronger role in working with other clinicians, Local Authorities, and other organisations, to provide the right services, in the right place, and at the right time, to meet individual needs.
“All of this will only happen by unlocking the talents and professionalism of NHS staff working in primary care, giving them greater freedoms to provide the services their patients want and more control over how they do it, whilst equipping them with the necessary skills.”
The plans signal a much stronger focus on extending patient choice in Primary Care. Everyone should be able to choose a GP, and there should be a greater range of comparative information, the ability to register online, and a greater range of options for consulting with their GP (e.g. by telephone or e-mail).
The services provided by family doctors and other primary and community clinicians must be shaped by, and around, individuals; and respond to their needs. Patients and the public should have a strong voice in saying how they want services to improve. They should always feel that the system is connected and working for them. They should have access to a growing range of health services in a GP surgery, and in other community settings, and in their own homes. They should have more choice, including the ability to choose both their GP practice, and how they manage their care.
Primary and community care services will play a strong role in increasing fairness and equality of opportunity – both for communities where socio-economic factors are linked to reduced life expectancy and higher levels of illness, and for groups such as people with learning disabilities who find it more difficult to access the right services and who have poorer health outcomes.
The government aims to help people have access to a wider and more joined-up range of services in their local communities, including diagnostic services, specialist clinics for conditions such as diabetes and asthma, community pharmacies offering treatment for minor ailments, and community physiotherapy clinics.
Labour is increasing access to Primary Care (by opening new practices and GP-led health centres, and extending opening hours); by contrast the Conservatives would cut access. They would scrap the agreement with GPs to provide extended opening at evenings and weekends, and they oppose Labour’s plans for 152 new GP-led health centres across the country (including in Wolverhampton), open 8 am to 8 pm, seven days a week. The Conservative Party leader Mr. David Cameron MP even wrote in The Times that “Google can tell us more about our illness than our doctors.” (The Times, 3 July 2008) So much for supporting GPs.

