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Patient Access Website Pushing Private Health Care As NHS GP Services Cut - updated April '23

No longer available on NHS - Coronavirus Tests - Blood Tests - Physiotherapy - Asthma Emergency Inhaler

The Patient Access website which many NHS patients have to use in order to get repeat prescriptions, or to book a GP appointment, pushes patients towards private healthcare services listing over 50 services GPs are no longer paid by the NHS to provide.

This means the only way of getting these services is by using a private healthcare company!

But this is no surprise given that Patient Access is a product of the Leeds-based health IT giant EMIS, one of the three biggest firms providing digital back-office services to GPs.

Website, Open Democracy has this:

At the start of the pandemic, EMIS was one of 11 firms selected to supply remote GP access including video and online patient assessment services, after a tender process that lasted just 48 hours. In 2020 its profits increased sharply to £36m.

Phil Booth, co-ordinator of MedConfidential, raised potential privacy concerns. “How is a patient to know the legitimacy of the test or other thing they are buying and who is delivering it?

If you’re encouraging people, the worried well, to self-diagnose or seek further testing, and that involves them handing over a whole bunch of data to companies unknown, this is not the safe, trustworthy relationship that you would expect to have with your GP, and will damage trust.”

A spokesperson for EMIS said: “If a third party were to misuse an individual’s data then broadly speaking that would be a matter between those two parties – the same as if they had approached the healthcare provider directly, or found them through an internet search etc.”

The spokesperson added: “It would really depend on the facts of the matter… depending on the circumstances we might take action ourselves directly... we have agreements with the healthcare providers that include a number of obligations on them regarding acting in an appropriate and compliant manner.”

When using the website, after logging in with your user ID and password, pressing the 'Book An Appointment' link in the left hand margin menu, brings you to the page shown on the right.

Adding the GP service you want e.g. 'book an appointment' will allow you to do so if your GP practice allows access to this service via the website.

If it doe not, then the full list of services you have to pay for, is listed as shown in the image above right, and in the video link below.

Click on the image below to watch the video

 

But then again these services may still be available to those who have to call their GP practice for an appointment, in which case this website is giving false information and pushing people to private paid-for services!

This is misleading information because it suggests that those GP practices not allowing you to book a GP appointment via Patient Access website, also do not provide the list of NHS services.

This is all part of the NHS England and Government strategy to reduce NHS services and hand them over to the private sector via the 42 Integrated Care Systems that now are given their cut from the NHS budget to use independently and with no oversight by NHS England or the local community.

It is they who will decide which NHS and GP services will be provided in their geographic area, and by whom - the NHS or a private healthcare company.

Year on year, the NHS overall budget has been cut, this year by £500 million, despite what the Tories claim in the House of Commons.

With the Health & Care Act 2022 now being law, the changes to the structure and services of the NHS up until now illegally implemented; now have legitimacy and along with the abolition of the principle of universal cafe for all which was the whole premise for the creation of the NHS in 1948.

It is clear that this is just the very beginning of the ending of free healthcare despite every adult in the UK paying National Insurance Contributions, the imposing of a so-called 'NHS Levy' by the Tory Government that has so far handed over more than £10 Billion from the NHS budget to their private healthcare company friends which includes those Tory and Labour MPs with interests in private healthcare companies!

Source: NHS / KONP / 999 Call For NHS / HSJ / OpenDemocracy / Morning Star

See also: NHS Privatisation News Archive

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