The policy that the practice boundary pilots are supposed to be testing is of a grotesque stupidity. (Just 12 patients switch to another practice under boundary pilots)
Those who understand how general practice functions can see quite quickly that removing practice boundaries is a nonsense, and that it cannot work.
The word ‘choice' seems to put people into a trance where their critical faculties shut down.
Either the politicians and policy makers who back this are remarkably stupid, or – probably more likely – they are actually quite clever and are playing a game of deception.
They are manufacturing consent so they can say ‘we are only doing what the public want'.
Abolishing practice boundaries is a Holy Grail for some – it will ‘liberate' English general practice for large for-profit companies, and allow an entirely different model of primary care provision.
Will the Department of Health undertake an honest, transparent and robust ‘independent evaluation' of this train wreck of a pilot? Or will it try to roll the policy out nationally before the evaluation has reported?
Watch this space. If and when they roll it out, I predict that numerous problems will come to the surface.
One day people will look at this policy and marvel how so many people could have been so stupid.
From Dr George Farrelly, Bethnal Green, east London
