News  

Losing even a few hundred patients each will destabilise most nearby small practices and force them to close. Patients will have to travel long distances.

We need to make sure that polyclinics, which are being unfairly funded about three times higher per patient than GP practices, do not bring about the end of family practice, the cheapest and most efficient form of delivery of primary care in the western world; GPs cost the government about £25 a year after tax per patient, seeing them an average of about four times. Private care can never match that.

We have to persuade the government that polyclinics should provide localised out-of-hours care but not register patients.

Dr Suman Mohindra, Bulwell, Nottingham.