Out of hours care shake-up for Helston doctors

This was the view of the town’s MP Andrew George, who met with GPs at Helston Medical Centre last Friday to discuss plans for the future.

He described GPs as being “the fulcrum” of the health care industry since the abolishment of the Primary Care Trust in April and their role would only become more important.

Mr George, who is a member of the government’s Health Select Committee, believed that in a year or two doctors’ surgeries would take over the control of out-of-hours care and he saw Helston Medical Centre at the forefront of that.

He said: “My prediction is that I think GPs are going to have to take control of that. I don’t think Serco can carry on doing that.

“Have a 24/7 service from your local medical centre, rather than a different group of people running it through a telephone service.

“As well as being quite forward looking as a practice, they [Helston Medical Centre] are also quite ambitious.”

The issue was discussed last Friday, with Mr George saying afterwards: “Do they think it’s important? Yes. They think it’s important to integrate the whole thing, to make sure they take a greater overview for all of their patients.”

However, he added it was “very early” to say how this would pan out.

For the last year Helston Medical Centre has been carrying out the contract for providing GP services to the Isles of Scilly, led by Dr Francis Old, with staff flying over on a rota basis to provide back up to the two permanent doctors on St Mary’s.

Mr George said of Helston: “It’s quite a cutting edge medical centre. I think they’re doing lots of good work there. In terms of going forward Helston is looked to as one that is trying out new things and trying out different ways of providing the service. I think that’s something very much to be encouraged.

“In these times we have to find more effective ways to help patients – and patients seem to have more demands than what they used to; partly a function of an ageing population.”