Barnet Labour says questions to be asked about Ravenscroft GP Plan
Barnet Labour says there are serious questions to be asked about the controversial proposal by the local CCG (Clinical Commissioning Group) to move Ravenscroft GP practice in Golders Green the three and a half miles to Finchley Memorial Hospital in Granville Road, North Finchley.
The move would disadvantage many Ravenscroft patients, particularly older people with mobility problems, who would not be able to make the journey on busy, congested roads to see a doctor or pick up their prescriptions on a regular basis. The CCG is currently consulting on the plan and patients have already protested about it in the local press.
Labour believes there are issues around transparency and accountability and the CCG needs to answer these questions:
What was the competitive process by which Ravenscroft was chosen as the preferred bid to fill empty space at the hospital? Labour understands that there were at least two other bids from GPs in Finchley, one from a single practice and the other from a consortium of six practices in the area, two of which are the closest geographically to Finchley Memorial Hospital. Why choose another medical centre more than twice the distance away?
Why has the CCG been inaccurate in what it has said about the proposal? It claims that ‘this is not a practice closure’ yet the paper that went to the council’s Health Overview Scrutiny Committee on November 21, 2018 said that ‘The proposal is that one of these practices Ravenscroft Medical Centre will move into FMH and close their existing premises.’ The CCG says that after the move ‘patients will continue to see the same doctors and nurses,’ but if they cannot make the journey that will clearly not happen.
How much has the proposal been driven by the thousands of pounds that the CCG has been paying for the empty space at Finchley Memorial Hospital? Previous plans to encourage GPs to move there fell down on the rents and service charges they were faced with. The CCG now says it will subsidise these payments for the successful practice for a period of 10 years. How much will the subsidy amount to?
Cllr Anne Hutton, Labour lead on the health overview scrutiny committee said, “Labour has no objection in principle to the co-locating of GPs with other medical services. But this proposal does not take the needs of Ravenscroft patients into account, and I understand that other GP practices are unhappy about potentially having to take those who do not want to make the journey. These are serious concerns that deserve to be answered.”
