Call to shield GP funding from NHS budget cuts

Published on Thursday 11 March 2010 21:35

DOCTORS' practices should be ring-fenced from any potential damage from financial cuts to the NHS budget.

Dean Marshall, the head of GPs in Scotland, warned the reduction in health spending would create pressure on the Scottish Government to introduce more effective policies that delivered services that the public needed.

He said ministers needed to work with doctors to find the best way to care for patients when less money was available. Increased spending on the NHS in the last decade had seen the service flourish, Dr Marshall said.

But he added: "There will be increased competition across the NHS for scarce resources and general practice must not suffer as a result."

The conference in Clydebank also heard calls for frontline services not to be reduced or withdrawn at a time when bankers were getting huge bonuses, partly funded by the taxpayer.

In another debate, GPs voiced opposition to the scrapping of prescription charges, saying the money it would cost would be better spent elsewhere.

They said only 12 per cent of patients in Scotland had to pay for prescriptions, with the poorest already exempt from charges.

But Malcolm Kerr, an Ayrshire and Arran GP, said prescription charges were "a tax on being ill".

Elsewhere at the conference, concerns were also raised about patient confidentiality with increased use of electronic record-sharing systems. GPs said tight safeguards needed to be in place.

There was also widespread anger about practice funding being linked to the patient access survey. Doctors said they could have funds cut based on the views of a tiny number of patients.