Thursday 16 June 2016

'I have been put up for sale by NHS England' - Amazing Grace petitions David Cameron

Grace demonstrates outside Monitor/NHS Improvement

Grace Balogun is seeking support for her petition LINK to save her Sudbury (Vale Farm) GP Practice from the market. She tells David Cameron why he should intervene below.


Let me introduce myself .My name is Grace and I need urgent help. I am a National Health Service patient and, along with my fellow patients of the fantastic Sudbury GP surgery in Wembley. I have been put up for sale by NHS England. The same NHS England that loves to talk about "patient choice" but all NHS England really care about is "the market in healthcare". BUT I TALK - AND CARE - ABOUT MY FAMILY DOCTORS WHO KEEP ME WELL AND GIVE ME THE CARE MY COUNTRY PROMISED ME FOR WORKING AND LIVING IN THIS COUNTRY - FOR LIFE, CRADLE TO GRAVE.

I live in the London Borough of Brent, an area where we already have a shortage of GPs, more GPs retiring , and a largely deprived population which is expected to expand over the next 5 years by about 80,000 people. I suffer from a range of major health issues which means that I live my life in a wheelchair. Don't get me wrong. I have a good and happy life – or I did until NHS England decided – without asking me – that it would be a good idea to take away from me the Family Doctors who have cared for me for the last 14 years. GP's who I would follow ,if they moved halfway across the country – but my wheelchair bound status makes that pretty tricky. To add insult to injury, I have already had one fight - alongside my fellow patients - lasting 9 years, and including threatened legal action against the NHS, to keep my Doctors from being tendered out for sale before. That fight - I thought - ended in 2013. 

 
Patients make a stand against marketisation
So WHY is Sudbury Surgery Patient List again "up for sale", and my fragile care threatened?

NOT TO SAVE MONEY. THE NEW CONTRACT WILL COST NHS ENGLAND £70,0000 A YEAR MORE. NOT BECAUSE OUR GPS AND THEIR TEAM ARE NO GOOD – although senior officials in NHS England London region (including the Boss) wrote telling my MP, my local councillors and a Brent patient group that they were not "performing" - ridiculous allegations they have since had to withdraw.

 NOT BECAUSE IT IS HARD FOR ME TO GET AN APPOINTMENT WITH MY GP – no, we are known in Brent for having fantastic service from our surgery.

NOT BECAUSE OF INADEQUATE SERVICES -We have EXTRA SERVICES, like in-house professional counselling sessions every week, a GP specially trained in mental health services, a specialist diabetic clinic and diabetic nurse, methadone prescribing service, minor surgery, acupuncture and were just about to start the practice as a GP training practice. Our practice also hosts a walk-in blood testing clinic, and the out of hours "overflow" GP appointments for our locality. Sudbury Surgery does a fantastic service for the community, IN the community. It is run by a not for profit social enterprise.

NO, I have been put up for sale because MY DOCTORS ARE JUST TOO GOOD. Since their social enterprise got the contract 3 short years ago, the patient list has grown from 5000 to 8600, and is still growing. How I wish it had stayed at less than 6000! Why, you ask me? Because, at less than 6000 patients, apparently, according to NHSE England, a "patient list" is "unattractive to the market" . Market, what market ? The market to which my surgery and the 15 other practices in "Tranche 4 London GP practices" NHS England gleefully advertised as the "greatest number of opportunities to potential providers yet" -when it held a "market engagement event" helpfully timed when our GPs were serving their patients in surgery. Bulk sale opportunity! Does it sound as though NHS England is interested in keeping the practice with our ordinary, caring, hardworking GPs?

Those companies who attended the "event" included (off-shore) Virgin Healthcare (who wanted us last time), Care UK, and The Practice Group (who have just "bulk" handed back 5 GP practices in Sussex to the NHS (meaning of course the patients in their patient lists) after taking them over, when their funding was cut - there's a reassuring precedent).

When we realised what was happening, Sudbury Surgery's patients got together, had meetings, wrote many long letters to NHSE, and to NHS (so-called) Improvement who is supposed to regulate "competition" in the NHS, demonstrated outside the Department of Health, NHS England, attracted newspaper attention and explained to and collected the signatures of over 3700 INDIVIDUAL PATIENTS to a petition saying "NHS ENGLAND PLEASE GO AWAY AND LEAVE US WITH THE GPS WHO HAVE CARED FOR US FOR OVER 14 YEARS".

We have struggled for 9 months using every avenue open to us. HAS IT MADE ANY DIFFERENCE? NO. So now I am calling on David Cameron and Jeremy Hunt and The Queen to intervene and ask NHS England to take my Doctors 'practice out of the tender NOW. I was promised cradle to grave care in the NHS - not to be a commodity patient - attractive to a "market". Not that I think a patient like me with complex health needs will be very attractive to a "provider" interested in "markets" PLEASE, PLEASE LET ME AND MY FELLOW SUDBURY SURGERY PATIENTS KEEP THE DOCTORS THEY LOVE, and save the NHS £70,000 a year .

Sign Grace's petition HERE

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Excellent work. Just signed. But is it just me or does everyone get these change.org pages in Spanish? They must lose thousands of votes by the confusion this produces. Loads of people must be happy to sign but put off when they have to 'firma'.
Mike Hine

Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group said...

Thanks, Martin, and 'Amazing Grace'. Now blog-linked at Kilburn Unemployed blog: Petitition against the turning of people and 'service users' into profit-making commodities

Philip Grant said...

Well done, Grace, for making a stand against NHS England's attempt to "privatise" your GP practice. I have just signed your petition, and hope that many more decent minded local residents will do the same.

Philip.

Anonymous said...

Thankyou Grace for highlighting this scandalous situation. Perhaps people at the "higher levels" will start to realise that patients need to be listened to and were not put on this earth to be commodities to be used in a system providing "jobs for their mates".

Philip Grant said...

When I signed the petition, 24 hours ago, I was "number 37". Now there are 159 signatories, but this is an issue which deserves far greater support.

Please support Grace's local GP practice in Sudbury, and others around the country that NHS England is trying to "sell off". If you are concerned at what Grace has shown is going on in OUR NHS, and have not signed yet, please show your concern by signing the petition - you can find it by clicking on the red "LINK" at the beginning of the blog above. Thank you.

Philip.

Nan. said...

I am number 216 on the petition. I also posted the following comment on the petition page.

"There has been unconscionable dishonesty by NHS England about there being a legal requirement to put APMS practices up for tender.

THERE IS NO SUCH LEGAL REQUIREMENT.

Patients have exercised their choice to retain the (social enterprise) surgery they fought so hard to establish.

How dare these unaccountable bureaucrats put up our surgeries 'for sale' to entities that exist principally to make a profit.

If it suits a new provider, they can chose not to co-operate with the various integrated working initiatives that the local NHS has set up.

Apparently, any provider candidates being interviewed cannot be asked about their intention to co-operate with such initiatives if selected! [I know this because I put the question to NHSE.]"

Nan Tewari
Secretary, Brent Patient Voice
Co-chair, Harness Locality Patient Participation Group