Campaigners explain opposition to GP at Hand

AS LOCAL health campaigners prepared to demonstrate in Chrisp Street Market on Thursday lunchtime, they have issued a new warning about why “on-line GPs” are bad news for patients.

“There’s no place in East London for GP at hand,” they said – following the news that the shady business had secretly rented rooms in the Newby Place Health Centre. Campaigners listed their concerns about the service as they planned to hold their lunchtime protest.

•GP at hand promises a GP consultation within 24 hours – but this is via a mobile phone ap. If you need to talk to a doctor, rather than just exchange messages, it will take longer. One local NHS patient explained the kind of problem this could lead to. “I went to the doctor with some worrying symptoms today,” she said, “and as we talked, the doctor decided I needed blood tests. He actually took my blood then and there, in the surgery – so everything was all done in one visit. If I had registered with an online service, I would have had to be booked in somewhere for the blood test – so there would have been no time saving to me.”

•GP at Hand invites local residents to register with them. However, the terms and conditions of registering, which can be found on their website, warns that there are limitations on who can register. It admits its app-based service is not suitable for children under 16, for example – and that some prescriptions cannot be issued via the app, so you would have to book up and go to see a GP face to face.
Because of these restrictions, local campaigners worry that traditional GP surgeries in East London will be left with a higher concentration of patients with higher than average healthcare needs – which could be hard for practices to meet.
Bow GP Dr Jackie Applebee explained, “GP at Hand seems to be deliberately targeting healthy young people. They won’t take you on if you’re pregnant, frail and elderly, or have a terminal illness. They don’t want patients with complex mental health problems, drug problems, dementia, a learning disability or safeguarding needs. We think that’s because these patients are expensive. This service takes money from the NHS, by picking the most ‘profitable’ patients.”

•Campaigners point to a number of other problems: the digital service takes money out of the mainstream NHS, there are no home visits to patients living outside Hammersmith, the app does not offer the same continuity of care by an identified health professional (so the patient would have to explain their condition from scratch during each consultation).

It seems that local campaigners are not the only ones concerned about the company. They believe that NHS England has already asked GP at Hand to move more slowly when it comes to taking on new patients from new areas, to ensure that there are no problems with the service.

Dr Jackie Applebee says that GP at Hand’s business model is already causing problems for GPs across London. “Surgeries like my own are now getting lots of calls from angry former patients, who didn’t realise that by using GP at Hand they were deregistering from their usual surgery. Some are insisting on reregistering, causing a lot of extra work for our staff.”

•The Tower Hamlets Keep Our NHS Public (KONP) demonstration will take place on Thursday, 29th March, meeting up at 1.30pm outside the Ideas Store at the Chrisp Street Health Centre.

•Read more about online GP services:
Locals protest at arrival of online GP
Online GPs: checks find 40% failing
TH KONP leaflet on “GP at Hand”

•Read more NHS stories:
Thousands march as Tories struggle with NHS
NHS tries to cut prescriptions

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