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| Daily Telegraph, By David Sapsted, 21 December 2005 |
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| rural GPs' surgery says it will have to close for a month because of a funding crisis at a local NHS trust. |
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| The threatened closure would mean that the six doctors at the surgery in Combs Ford, near Stowmarket, Suffolk, would only treat their 9,000 patients in "life-threatening emergencies". |
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| Patients have been warned that the surgery will close during March if the East Suffolk Primary Care Trust, which is facing a deficit of almost £50 million, goes ahead with a plan to defer the March payment to 247 GPs until April, when there will be an injection of fresh cash at the start of the 2006-07 financial year. |
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| Last month, the same trust prompted a storm of protest with a plan to save money by refusing to provide hip and knee replacements to obese patients. Now, to the dismay of the GPs' patients, the surgery closure scheme has been revealed in a monthly newsletter from Dr Jackie Muir, one of the partners in the Combs Ford practice. |
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| "I am sure you are all aware of the financial difficulties which the NHS is currently functioning under," she writes. "Our local PCT is overspent by a large amount of money and we are aware that this affects patients in many ways, some of which include the long wait for out-patient appointments, investigations and operations. |
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| "In order to try and minimise this overspend in the current financial year, our PCT are threatening to defer payments to GPs from March until April. This would mean that money which we should receive on March 1, 2006, to pay our staff, running costs and ourselves, will not arrive until early April. |
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| "I am writing this notice to inform you that, if we are not paid in March, then the surgery will be forced to close, except for life-threatening emergencies. |
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| "We will publish information about what to do in an emergency nearer the time. Please be assured that we have no intention of causing any harm or suffering to any of our patients. We hope that you will support us in our protest against the continuing under-funding of the NHS." |
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| David Ruffley, Conservative MP for Bury St Edmunds, said that the threatened closure was "positive proof that we are now facing a full-on crisis in Suffolk". |
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He added: "The Health Secretary, Patricia Hewitt, is talking about hit squads going into Suffolk to sort out the financial mess that causes threats to surgeries like that at Combs Ford. But it is all a little too late. The crisis has been raging for two years and the financial controls have been a complete and utter joke."
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| Beryl Myers-Hewitt, a patient at the surgery and a Stowmarket town councillor, said: "The surgery has a lot of elderly patients and it appears that they are being held to ransom to make a point. |
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| "People will find it difficult to get treatment at other surgeries in the area because they have their own patients to deal with. Even if they did find somewhere else to go, a lot of elderly people would be stuck if they did not have the transport to get there or could not afford the taxi fares." |
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| A spokesman for the trust, an amalgamation of the Ipswich, Suffolk Coastal and Central Suffolk trusts, said that no final decision had been made on deferring GPs' payments. |
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| The three trusts, which have a combined budget of £380 million, are running at a deficit this year of £47.9 million. |
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| Dr Ron Donnelly, a GP in Sudbury and chairman of the Suffolk branch of the British Medical Association, said: "I don't think the surgery is overreacting. If anything, it is evidence of the financial mess the PCTs have got themselves into. I can see why some GPs rightly feel that if they are not going to be paid then they cannot work." |
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