PATIENTS faced with the closure of their local Camden Road GP surgery overcame bureaucratic attempts to bar them from attending an invitation-only meeting with the director of NHS Central London last Friday.
Before having to battle their way into the meeting, some spoke to News Line.
Younus Miah, a restaurant manager, said: ‘I’ve come here to support our local surgery.
‘I had a heart attack in 1997. I had a lot of help from my GP. They give a very friendly service.
‘Our surgery is faced with closure. Our local area has already been suffering.
‘People don’t know what to do or where to go.
‘Nobody wants the Camden Road surgery to close and we are determined to keep it open.
‘People need it. They can’t travel further. The nearest surgery is two bus rides away.
‘We are lobbying NHS London to demand they carry out their duty of care and fund our local surgery.
‘We need our surgery open for the benefit of all local people, whatever it costs.’
Retired postal worker Nikos Adonis and his wife Amy came for the meeting.
Nikos told News Line: ‘I’m a patient of the practice and I don’t want them to move.
‘If they do move, we still need a place locally.
‘We don’t want to travel miles to another surgery.
‘The Camden Road surgery has four to five thousand patients.
‘So they should have their own surgery.
‘The PCT are trying to squeeze us into another place in Kentish Town or King’s Cross – that’s no good.
‘We have to fight the closure. Do whatever we can to keep our surgery.
‘Frank Dobson is our local MP. He should be doing this, he’s not doing anything to stop the closure.
‘He was health secretary under Labour and he was useless.
‘We have to rely on ourselves now.
‘We’re lobbying the NHS London meeting today.
‘They have to carry out their duty of care and provide us with a local surgery.’
Nazma Begum said: ‘I’m here because I don’t want my surgery to be closed.
‘I feel they are cheating us.
‘I have children and we need our local doctor. We have to look after our health.’
When the patients started towards the room the meeting was to take place in, Tony Hoolighan, associate director of primary care, NHS Central London, told the small crowd of a dozen or so: ‘This is a private meeting, only the six people invited can attend.
‘You can come to a meeting at the surgery every Thursday.’
It was pointed out that these were patient dissemination meetings and did not answer patients’ concerns.
Nikos Adonis pointed out: ‘Let’s be realistic, the majority of people are workers, they can’t get to a meeting in the day.
‘It’s not fair, why are you so scared? You’ve got three women here and a pensioner.’
Amy Adonis added: ‘Most of us don’t want to go to King’s Cross; it’s run by the same awful people.
‘We want an NHS surgery.’
Eventually, the NHS Central London Medical Director came out from the meeting room and felt obliged to let all the protesting patients in.
After the meeting, Nazma Begum said: ‘They said they have tried everything they could, they are sorry. That’s all they said.
‘I’m not satisfied. I don’t know what to do now. The nearest doctor said they won’t take us.
‘We have to keep up the fight. Just saying they can’t do anything is so horrible, we can’t accept that.’
Pat Morgan said: ‘I wrote to The Practice, the private company who own the surgery.
‘I finally got a reply from Camden Road surgery assuring me that everything is changing and it was all wonderful.
‘All of a sudden we heard the surgery was closing down.
‘I went to The Practice towards the end of last year.
‘The Practice don’t respond to your letters, they pass them back to the surgery.
‘I still haven’t had any answer from Tony Hoolighan of the PCT.
‘The meeting this afternoon was the same as the one on 23rd February.
‘They railroad you. They’re condescending and patronising.
‘What really annoys me is there are loads of vulnerable patients and they only give you a little slot.
‘They gave us an hour and a good deal of that was them.
‘When we started asking questions, they just said there’s not enough time.’
During the meeting, the angry Camden Road Surgery patients lobbied the Camden PCT and demanded they provide new surgery premises and keep their local GP services open.
Patients slammed PCT claims of the alleged surplus capacity of other GP practices up to 1.5 miles distant, since nearer ones were refusing to register Camden Road GP patients as they were full, describing them as ‘living outside their catchment areas’.
Rejecting excuses of ‘tried but failed to find suitable alternative premises’ and ‘lack of funds’ from PCT directors, the dozen lobbyists condemned the previous privatisation of the practice on a short-term lease and also how GP services were run down by the private, for-profit company The Practice plc.
An attempt by management to exclude several ‘uninvited’ patients, including pensioners and children, from the ‘patient list dispersal’ meeting was defeated and speaker after speaker rounded on the closure plans due on 13 April 2012.
Desperate and ill patients slammed the claims of plentiful alternative GP practices for the 4,700 patients within a radius of up to 1.5 miles offered by PCT directors Russell and Pettersen and contracts manager Hoolighan.
Ms Wong, a Camden Road GP patient attacked the surgery closure despite being in obvious pain from health treatment. She said, ‘The PCT signed a contract with United Health, which then sold it on to The Practice.
‘The PCT has a legal responsibility to provide GP services. We would like the PCT to provide alternative premises.
‘It is impossible to live. We need a local doctor, I was suicidal and my doctor took good care of me personally and now they are all locums except one.
‘I tried to register with the nearest practice, James Wigg in Kentish Town, but they said I lived outside their catchment area of street names.’
‘We can not allow this closure to happen. If we don’t stop it, it will happen again and again,’ she said defiantly.
Pat Morgan, a patient at Camden Road for 50 years, said, ‘The Caversham GP practice is also turning people away. When we ring a surgery no one answers the phone. Sick people can’t go to a surgery a mile away early morning and pay £2.50 bus fare to get there to make an appointment, and pay another £2.50 to go home, and another £5 for the journey to the consultation later.’
Nikos Adonis, a retired postman and CWU rep, said, ‘This surgery is being deliberately run down. The Practice plc is working behind the scenes to shut the surgery and is running the service as a business. No one rang me about the closure.’
PCT corporate affairs director Pettersen claimed they had done extensive searches without success, which was vehemently rejected by the lobby.
‘We really have tried, but without success,’ she claimed. ‘We knew this was coming up.’
Other patients derided this excuse and demanded that contingency funding be found from the scores of billions of pounds of NI contributions by patients.
PCT manager Hoolighan stated that they ‘could not take any building as they are not up to NHS clinical standards and we do not have the capital or revenue to fit out buildings in the present national funding situation.
‘We are looking for a building we can walk into and have looked at the NHS and Camden council estates.
‘We are not looking for any other buildings,’ Hoolighan stated.
Trying to contain the outrage of the lobby at the cuts, PCT Medical Director Douglas Russell said, ‘We are prepared to respond to problems of people on an individual basis or you can go through the complaints procedure.’
As for the staff jobs threatened at the Camden Road surgery, Russell dismissively responded that, ‘We do not employ the staff. They are going through a legal process.’
Pettersen said, ‘We need to know the facts and we are interested in decreasing your distress,’ and was followed by Russell, who said, ‘I want to help you with access to the services you deserve,’ and promised urgently to ‘investigate the closed patient lists, but I am not here next week’.
But both rejected impassioned appeals and final demands from the lobby to provide alternative local premises, with Peterson curtly dismissing them with, ‘We have explained our position on that.’
l A mass meeting of over 80 patients and their families at the Camden Irish Centre voted on Thursday to oppose the GP closure and lobby the PCT consultation meeting the following day to demand they provide alternative local premises and funding for their local GP services.
Addressing the meeting, Chris Anglin, a local resident, UCU member and Camden Road patient of 20 years, slammed the closure of the surgery.
He said, ‘This attack on our local GP services is part of the onslaught on the whole NHS nationally by the Tory government.
‘On Tuesday the Tory Health Bill was passed by the House of Lords, despite mass opposition from doctors, nurses, medical staff and the trade unions and the population in general, and will now be rubber-stamped by the Commons and become law within weeks.
‘This bill, following £20 billions of NHS cuts in “efficiency savings”, will destroy and privatise the NHS, turning it over to private health companies to make profits.
‘Mass hospital closures will happen, and NHS treatment will require private insurance like the USA – or go without.
‘PCTs, and their duty of care to provide GP services, will be abolished. This attack must be defeated by occupations and a general strike to bring down this government.
‘We should join forces with the North East London Council of Action and affiliate with them to defeat these attacks to privatise and destroy the NHS.’
He added: ‘We condemn this attack on the NHS and demand that the local GP service is relocated locally in alternative premises provided by the PCT,’ he concluded.
Outraged patients from the floor also condemned the abolition of their local GP services. Speaker after speaker demanded the PCT provide alternative premises and funding.
He moved the resolution to lobby the PCT consultation meeting the following day to demand the local GP services be maintained, funded and provided with alternative local premises by the PCT. It was carried unanimously.
