Doctor at heart of city’s health shake-up in pledge on services

The doctor who will be taking the NHS in Hull into unchartered waters as a result of controversial Government reforms says GPs will be looking for alternative providers for services as part of efforts to drive down costs.

Dr Tony Banerjee, from Marfleet Group Practice in east Hull, is heading the new Clinical Commissioning Group, which will oversee the biggest shake-up in the NHS’s 60-year history at a local level.

The GP-led body will be replacing the city’s Primary Care Trust, which will disappear in April 2013, but will be set up in shadow form on October 1.

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Following protests the reforms have been watered down, with changes including stronger safeguards against a market free-for-all and extra safeguards against privatisation and to prevent private companies “cherry picking” profitable parts of the NHS.

Dr Banerjee, who was born and raised in the city and educated at Hymers School, said the changes would take place in the spirit of “if it isn’t broken don’t fix it”.

He said: “Where it differs completely from the PCT is that all these decisions will be made on a clinical basis with us as clinicians knowing what’s best for patients. As well as a bit of trepidation – it is new territory – I for one am quite excited. I think it will be a real opportunity for change in healthcare. I feel we are very well placed to act as representatives of patients.”

The group will be expected to make “sizeable” savings, some of which will come from looking for alternative providers of services. But Dr Banerjee said: “If district nursing was successful, I don’t see the point of putting it out to tender because we have already got a great service.”

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He says he is keen to change the mentality where private firms put up prices simply because they are supplying the NHS and will look at the provision of services like plastic surgery for purely cosmetic reasons. “I realise this job is not going to be a very popular job. I am not expecting to make hundreds of friends,” he added.

The new board is a work in progress, but will be dominated by GPs. It will also include one or two familiar faces – Hull PCT chairman and former Labour councillor Kath Lavery will be vice chairman. PCT non-executive director and former Hull Council director Andy Snowden and Paul Jackson, of Kier Group are also down as “lay people”.

There will also be representatives from GP practices, possibly a medical and surgical director and two patient ambassadors. The roles will be paid.

More than 20 per cent of the workforce at the PCT took voluntary redundancy or early retirement in March as part of moves to cut management costs, reducing the headcount from 300 to 223. The remaining staff will take on roles in the new structure.

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Asked about concerns about GPs having so much power, Dr Banerjee said they aimed to be as open and transparent as possible: “We have to go through proper accreditation. People who just think the Government are going to hand over half a billion pounds to a GP-led consortium are misled. It’s not a case of me having a cheque book and saying here’s a cheque book for you and you.”

During his training as a GP, Dr Banerjee worked in Withernsea and Willerby. He spent a year and a half at a practice in Cottingham, before coming to the Marfleet Group Practice in 2009.

A bout of advanced bowel cancer at the age of just 23, which meant daily chemotherapy and radiotherapy at Princess Royal Hospital, and a major operation at Castle Hill Hospital, when he was working there as a junior house doctor, saw him experience at first hand what it was like to be a patient.

He said: “People always say did it make you a better doctor?

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“It gave me awareness of the patient perspective which you think you know, but don’t really know, until you are a patient.”

GPs have now been given what they have been pushing for, he added: “For the first time GPs have been given the opportunity. I feel we have to grab it.”

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