Jan 7 2005
Responding to the Secretary of State for Health, John Reid's, report today (7 January 2005) on NHS and Independent Treatment Centres, the Chairman of the BMA's Consultants' Committee, Dr Paul Miller, warned that the centres were destabilising NHS hospitals. He said:
"The BMA has always welcomed the possibility of treatment centres cutting waiting times and therefore benefiting patients whose quality of life is being seriously impaired while they wait for medical treatment.
"However, from the start we have raised concerns that treatment centres would destabilise NHS hospitals' economies and this is exactly what is happening.
"We have heard of MRI scanners in NHS hospitals sitting unused while patients are scanned in mobile units in car parks outside. Hospitals will not be able to survive in a system of payment by results if workload is taken away.
"Patients get sick around the clock, seven days a week and hospitals must be fully resourced and staffed to cope with their needs. NHS hospitals provide this, they provide emergency services, they provide training and they deal with the most complicated cases. It is misleading for John Reid to claim that treatment centres provide services eight times faster than NHS hospitals.
"As doctors we are interested in providing patients with quality treatment as well as speedy treatment. If an emergency happens at three in the morning, patients go to NHS hospitals not treatment centres. If hospitals close where will they go?"