DOCTORS yesterday hit back at Tory Health Secretary Hunt, who had tried to claim that changes to GP contracts were to blame for A&E departments being ‘overloaded’.
Leading BMA member Anna Athow told News Line: ‘The “A&E crisis” is no mystery. Successive governments have been re-organising the NHS to make such a crisis inevitable.
‘They have reached the point where over 32 DGHs have either lost their A&Es or are close to it.
‘Consequently patients have to travel miles when they are acutely ill, by ambulance services themselves cut to the bone.
‘This weekend the figures came out for Newark, proving what every doctor knows, that if A&E is not accessible for a serious emergency within one hour, then patients die.
‘Official figures show that the mortality rate at Newark has gone up 37% since the closure of Newark Hospital’s A&E.
‘The newly appointed head of the ironically named Care Quality Commission, blurted out the real plan last week.
‘David Prior, (former Chief Executive of the Conservative Party,) boasted of his new “ independent” role and said, “If we don’t start closing acute beds, the system is going to fall over.”
‘You have been warned. The cuts are privatisation and are going to accelerate. The plan is to close even more acute beds with the inevitable result that we have only seen the beginning of a huge rise in emergency patient mortality rates.
‘So Jeremy Hunt limits his criticism to the deterioration of Out of Hours services, which it is true are appalling, since being largely handed over to the private sector in 2004.
‘There is no point in waiting. The health trade unions must take the initiative and insist this government is removed. The TUC needs to organise the general strike without delay.’
Dr Clare Gerada, Chair of the Royal College of GPs, said: ‘I really think it’s a shame that we’re blaming something that happened ten years ago for a crisis that’s happening today.’
She continued: ‘We too are short-staffed, we too are overworked; my workload has doubled in the last five years.’
Hunt launched his attack on GPs after a report from the College of Emergency Medicine warned that Accident and Emergency Departments are struggling to cope with rising attendance rates.
Hunt leapt on the concerns raised within the report to launch his attack on GPs, claiming there has been a ‘dramatic fall in confidence in alternatives’ to A&E since changes to the GP contract in 2004.
Hunt complained: ‘In the last three years the number of people going to A&Es has gone up by a million every year.’
He pledged: ‘This is something we have got to sort out in the next six months.’
He is planning the imminent closures of 12 Accident and Emergency departments in London and 60 nationally.
