Residents 'Thrown Off GP Lists'

5.10.00pm GMT Tue 25th Feb 2003

Residents in Whitton (and perhaps elsewhere in the borough) have been alarmed to be notified that their GP of many years is dropping them from their patient list with 30 days notice.

The reason given is that they live outside the practice boundary (the doctor is in Hounslow), though this has never been a problem before and many people who move do retain a link with a doctor who has known them for many years.

Vincent Cable has written to health secretary Alan Milburn demanding to know why residents are being treated so badly. He says they are being treated in a "perfunctory and bureaucratic manner, with no explanation as to why they are being struck off and with no appeal against the decision".

"What seems to have happened is that someone with a tidy mind in the NHS bureaucracy has decided to stop people exercising their choice to be with a doctor they know and trust and to force them into neat little boxes. "

"This is the kind of behaviour which alienates people from the NHS".

Vincent Cable warned also that this move will cause problems in the Whitton area which has been short of doctors; "the strength of the NHS is that is is a national service. We cannot allow a situation to arise where one area, Hounslow, tries to solve its problems - of scarcity of GPs - by exporting them to adjacent areas".

Contact: Ken Gregory, 49 Cypress Avenue Whitton, 8255 7949

Julie Mills, 86 Waverley Ave, 8894 1651

Joy Hood, 93 Montrose Ave, 8894 6122