Virgin Doctors

I am getting increasingly concerned over the demise of our NHS. I use the adjective ‘our’ not in that contrived way Marks & Spencer use ‘your’ in their advertising campaigns. ‘Your’ means by association, and in the case of M&S and other such businesses it’s a consumerist association. If you don’t buy it then it’s not yours. Contrast that with ‘our’; this adjective is about belonging, about being a part of something by default rather than merely consumption.

Our NHS was founded on collectivist principles of belonging. Unfortunately that sense of belonging is under threat from the very party that created. Labour’s ever increasing obsession with the use of private companies to run everything from schools, PFI’s and now healthcare is eroding our ability to belong to anything.

Richard Branson’s Virgin Health is has already embarked on its consultation process about their introduction of health care centres –otherwise known as polyclinics. Virgin’s own PR says it’s creating healthcare centres in order to “provide a selection of healthcare services tailored to local demand” and the first centre is opening in 2008 somewhere in the M4 corridor, with a further five more opening by the end of 2009.

Polyclinics will introduce larger, centralised health centres serving approximately 50,000 people and staffed by 25 or more GPs. The aim is to get GPs working within these centres – meaning that GPs would then be under private control. Currently GPs’ surgeries are run by partnerships of GPs. They have a contract with the NHS, but they also have some autonomy.

Virgin does not expect these polyclinics to make a profit: it will simply allow them to introduce other privately run commercial services like - dentistry, laser eye surgery, osteopathy, along with links to other post-operative Virgin services such as transport and media from these clinics.

Unlike the publicly funded NHS the delivery of health care isn’t a moral service but simply another platform for brand development through economic opportunity. Virgin aren’t alone in thinking health provision sits well with economic opportunity. As if by coincidence Labour’s Ben Bradshaw recently announced how NHS hospitals in England will be allowed from April 1 to advertise to attract patients. These NHS trusts will be allowed to use testimonials from patients, film stars and medical experts in order to promote their services and more alarmingly they won’t be restricted on how much they decide to spend on attracting patients.

So Labour has effectively paved the way for Virgin to build and administer Polyclinics through the ability to advertise their services and compete with other GP practices. Therefore what Keynes called ‘the love of money’ will allow the principles of avarice and greed to drive our healthcare. Moreover those with more money will undoubtedly have greater access to such health provision than those people from whom service providers can’t make as much profit from.   © Copyright Chris Thompson (unless otherwise stated). You may republish if you include an active link to the original and leave this notice in place.