The SAPC’s annual meeting of academic departments of general practice and primary care from London and the South East is a longstanding fixture in the academic calendar. The 2011 Meeting will be held from February 4-6 at Madingley Hall, Cambridge. The meeting is organised by the departments of primary care in the five main London medical schools. The 2011 meeting is being organised by the Department of Primary Care & Public Health at Imperial College London. For the 2011, our guest speakers include Dr Fiona Godlee (Editor of the BMJ), Professor Jan De Maeseneer (Professor of Family Medicine at the University of Ghent in Belgium); and Dr Roger Kneebone from the Department of Surgery & Cancer at Imperial College London. The meeting offers a good opportunity to present any research, development or teaching work that you have carried out in primary care. See the 2011 Meeting Website for further details.
NHS budgets are under considerable pressure. It is therefore unsurprising that many NHS Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) In England will aim to prioritise price in contract awards, But this approach is a significant threat to community-centred healthcare. While competitive tendering is a legally required, an excessive focus on costs in awarding NHS contracts risks overshadowing key factors such as established community trust, local expertise, and the long-term impact on continuity of care. This shift towards cheaper, often external, commercial providers threatens to cut the links between communities and their local health services. The argument that competitive tendering is solely about legal compliance, and not cost, is undermined by the very nature of such tendering, which by design encourages the lowest bid. This approach risks eroding the social fabric of local healthcare provision, where established relationships and understanding of specific community needs are essential. Establishe...
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