Labour has revealed plans to conduct a shake-up of GP services to create new ‘neighbourhood health centres’, if the party wins the next general election.
Plans are reported by the Telegraph to include ‘GP hubs’ where patients can walk in at evenings and weekends, bringing together doctors, dentists and treatment of minor injuries to take pressures off A&E.
Shadow health secretary Wes Streeting announced the plans, which seem to resemble the party’s old ‘polyclinic’ model, also known as Darzi centres, in connection with a tour of Australia’s health system.
Mr Streeting said: ‘I want the future of the NHS to be as much a neighbourhood health service as a National Health Service.
‘I think this is a model that will save patients’ time, save taxpayers’ money and fix the front door to the NHS.’
He added: ‘What I want to do is turn the NHS on its head. To move it from a system that is overly focused on hospital care, with so much late-stage diagnosis, basically a sickness service, to a neighbourhood health service, that gets to people faster, diagnosing and treating faster, and crucially joins up care, so patients no longer feel like they are being pushed from pillar to post.’
The health centres would be designed by the local ICB to meet the needs the community, and would be based on the system being introduced in Australia, which offers walk-in services seven days a week, for situations that are urgent, but not a major emergency, according to the report.
Mr Streeting said that while the Australian Labor health secretary had ‘the scars on his back’ from pushing his plans through against the opposition of unions, he was prepared to have the same battle, as ‘the patient’s champion’.
In a post on X, Mr Streeting said: ‘This week I saw first-hand the difference that the Australian Labor Government is making in Australia – with urgent care clinics that relieve pressure on GPs and A&E departments.
‘Keir Starmer’s Labour Government will adopt this approach with new neighbourhood health centres.’
In 2011, the Coalition Government decided to scrap the Darzi centres set up under the previous Labour Government, after a Department of Health review of all GP-led health centre contracts in England.
At the time, Pulse revealed the legacy of the GP-led network of Darzi centres had left some primary care trusts (PCTs) facing financial shortfalls of up to £300,000 a year.
RCGP chair Professor Kamila Hawthorne told Pulse: ‘We’re open to sharing ideas with and learning from other countries to explore what initiatives work and what don’t as we try to ensure patients receive the best possible care in a way that helps keeps the health service sustainable.
‘Our understanding is that the innovative approach to primary care services in Australia has come with significant resources for infrastructure and workforce.
‘So in a similar way, new initiatives in the UK will need to be backed up by sufficient resource and more GPs, so that they can be implemented effectively – and that they are properly piloted and evaluated before wider roll out, so we know they are of benefit for both patients and the health service as a whole.’
Dr Katie Bramall-Stainer, chair of the BMA’s GP committee, said: ‘It is encouraging to see Mr Streeting recognising the pressures that GPs are under, the need to invest in general practice and wider primary care, the urgency to reverse the current workforce crisis, and the punitive imposition of the 2023/24 GP contract.
‘We have to find meaningful solutions with politicians having witnessed the determined erosion of general practice and its continuity of care in recent years.
‘We have thousands fewer fully qualified, full time equivalent GPs today than we had eight years ago; starvation of resource into the bread-and-butter contracts that practices rely on to provide a safe service to their patients; the sacrifice of lifesaving continuity of care upon the altar of politically motivated access targets; and subsequently, our current workforce is stretched beyond capacity and safety.
‘We know how we can rebuild general practice to return it to being the jewel in the NHS crown that it was for so many decades, so I continue to invite politicians of all parties, and governments present and future, to take heed and work with us to rebuild general practice for patients, their GPs, and their teams in a solutions-focused approach.’
Dr Selvaseelan Selvarajah, a GP partner in East London and BMA council representative, told Pulse that Labour should be thinking about creating a single point of access for patients to contact their local NHS services.
He said: ‘There’s lots of different points of access for patients within the NHS at the moment and it can get very confusing for the patient.
‘Care, and especially urgent care, is very much fragmented – GPs are delivering urgent care, 111 is delivering urgent care, urgent treatment centres are doing it.
‘So one of the plans that we should be thinking about is, at a PCN level, to have a single triage for the patient and then they can be sign-posted to other services.’
Dr Phil Whitaker, a GP partner in Somerset, said Labour should consider to ‘scrap 111’ and bundle funding with ARRS and out of hours into a ‘radical’ new GMS and PCN contract, with power to locally determine recruitment, skill-mix and integration with daytime practice.
He added: ‘These will work. We’ve done them before. Key is trusting local determination.’
In October, Mr Streeting said that he recognised the ‘value GP partners provide’, after spending time in general practice.
He also said he ‘made it very clear’ to hospitals that any funding that becomes ‘available’ under a Labour Government would go to primary care and other non-acute sectors.
Earlier this year, the Labour party promised to ‘bring back the family doctor and guarantee face-to-face appointments to all who want them’.
Stroke of genius. I’m quite sure that’ll fix it.
To paraphrase from another source, “Care costs money. How caring do you want to be?”
Oh Hell no, been there done that.
Just no.
In Australia, Any patient can go to any GP. The GPs get paid to see every patient, depending on condition, how long it takes and if they make care plans etc. There is no way this will work in the uk, unless patients are given the same choice. It will just be more “GP to follow up everything” from more areas, rather than just the consultants, ambulance service, A+E, walk in centres, urgent care centres, district nurses, physio, OTs, pharmacists……
Fptp political system is F@@@ed.The definition of madness being repeating adnausea and expecting a different outcome.There are not enough staff or enough monies to pay for this political wet dream.The only answer is total reform of the political system.The only country with a fptp political system is Kazakhstan,says it all really.
How about consultation with the experts = GPs hospital doctors , ambulance service nurses etc
They actually understand health provision better than Wesley and co.
In Australia patients pay for ambulances and GP s get paid per consultation
GPs need to be paid on a workload level including payment for each consultation and realistic deprivation payments
Wouldn’t it be lovely for doctors to compete to work in deprived areas as they can make the most impact of the areas health care and be properly paid for the hard work with enough staff and allied medical staff
Let’s start investing in the most deprived areas and let’s make real change even if it costs money or diverts some resources from affluent areas
Needs levelling up (or down) planning to deliver best care to deprived areas as more affluent population groups will always manage to get decent health care even if they pay for it
When did Primary Care become one of the ‘non-acute sectors’ ?
Was it when Government decreed that every patient who wanted should be offered a same-day appointment with their GP of choice?
What they are all missing is that the Australian system also needed a massive injection of resources, and if they are not careful, all the qualified GPs needed to do this here will have emigrated to Aust before they get the resources allocated to the NHS.
Classic Dunning Kruger. These people don’t know enough to realise how little they know.
Appointing individuals like this to Health Secretary is like putting someone with a first aid certificate in charge of an ITU.
Like deja vu all over again.
Darzi like hubs Salaried Service expanding Prevention That non-dom fund is being really stretched
At last a politician who understands that neighbourhood primary care is the only way forward.
It will be cost effective and allow scarce support services to address the needs of several practices at a sustainable level.
It must be locally led
One neighbourhood; several practices co-operating.
What is a “local icb”? Ours sit in meetings so far away from our patch, have not once stepped foot into a primary care building and have simply never felt so remote from the coal face. Laughable if it wasn’t all so tragic.
Hey Wes can I be your spad? I’ll do it for free… there’s nothing wrong with primary care that can’t be fixed by better funding and less regulation. And while the 6th formers undertake their 8 year journey to partnership, you can keep the old timers like me in their chairs by ditching appraisal, revalidation, income shaming, and the fucking CQC while your busy saving money burning all the useless quangos,
Agree fptp is rotten and undemocratic. Even the omov voting system on I’m a Celebrity.. is fairer. Also all political schemes/scams to “fix” the NHS are “dead cat” distracting narratives – don’t bother engaging with them. The political class, Tory and Labour, is bankrupt and only interested in the revolving door of opportunity for themselves and pandering to the rich 1%. Get rid of the huge tier of pointless managers and those useless Dr-politicians who pretend to talk for ordinary hardworking patient-facing GPs. Let me choose a “dirty dozen” of drs, nurses and other HCPs and I’ll fix primary care!
Dr No,
Yes, Yes, Yes!
It used to be that the re-cycling of previous failed policies spanned at least a couple of political cycles, they’re now recycling the rubbish even before its been forgotten for the first time!
Regards
Paul C
When will we see health care policy and planning removed from politic and a long term plan greater than 5 years enacted 🤔
Ha ha ha ha ha!
So his ‘great plan’ to save the nhs is recycling a failed idea from 15 years ago?
Ha ha ha!
Wes Centres sounds better. ‘Have you been for a Wes lately’
I’ve lived in Germany; anyone thinking Proportional Representation is an improvement on FPTP is as deluded as Wes is on the NHS.
Well, it worked well last time, didn’t it? Our local one in Southampton cost £100s per attendance, and when it was converted into a sort of APMS practice they got c £1000 per patient, just for staying open about two hours longer.
Wes Streeting resembles an excited child with a new electronic toy -doesn’t really understand it but just ants to get on and do something.
Unfortunately playing around with an NHS he clearly does not understand in any meaningful way has become his new focus.
I think this is the most detached, ridiculous and irrelevant health/shadow secretary we have seen so far
How many more times can he change his mind on what GP will be like under labour? No planning, no consistency of approach. Yes, an excitable kid with a shiny thing with buttons. He doesn’t know how it works, but let’s just press one and see what happens
The article suggests he has been on a “fact-finding” trip to Aus – publicly funded presumably – I suspect he had a couple of schooners of VB too many in that hot sun
Every little helps and there are many “locum GPs” who would happily help out BUT the money would be better spent invested in general practices. GP needs a new contract, one that encourages and embraces continuity; not continued tinkering around the edges.
I agree with the comment above – Dunning Kruger accurately and succinctly characterises the majority of those who drift to leadership roles within the government but additionally within NHS England , RCGP and most notably currently PCN Clinical Directors. As this effect now predominates within these groups, it will be a very long road back to recover General Practice as this will require some improbable insight from these incumbents or wholesale changes of NHS leaders which is equally unlikely as they act in unison.
PCN Clinical Directors especially those who also transitioned from CCGs onto ICB mostly seem rapidly to adopt NHSE Group Think. Probably why they were appointed in the first place. Until the interests of coalface GPs are genuinely represented at local level Political and Financuzl imperatives will drive ICB decision making., to the detriment of Pfimary Care.
Things really aren’t working well at the moment and has significantly deteriorated for both Drs and patients over the last few years. Maybe some sort of radical change is needed