introduction

Let me introduce you to my GP, or rather my ex-GP:

The Oakleigh Medical Centre's lone GP Dr Charles Simenoff has announced his retirement on ill-health grounds, but has described the PCT's handling of the matter as a "shambles".

Instead of recruiting a replacement, the Trust opted to tender Oakleigh's 2,600-patient list out to local surgeries - effectively cutting a practice which dates back to the postwar fledgling days of the National Health Service.

…Dr Simenoff said: "I've been off sick for such a long while that I've decided I cannot really run the practice. We have been approached by several doctors to use the practice as a going concern, employing my staff. A perfectly good practice could still have been functional from the first of July. It's been shut down for no good reason.

"I think the PCT's policy is to get rid of smaller practices - even though it's one of the most underdoctored areas in England. Part of the deal is to get doctors into bigger practices so that services that used to be done in hospitals can be done in the surgery."

Aside from being an excellent GP, Dr S was, I think I can safely say, the only Jewish Jambo in North Manchester, just as I was the only ex-Catholic Stokie. Some you lose, we agreed, and some you draw. But that’s by the by. Last year, my dentist got hustled out of the NHS. Now I’m going to have to hustle round local surgeries or get registered at a barn two miles away. I believe this is known as reform and that the government thinks it makes them popular. Such is personalized medicine: every individual patient gets fucked around with to a greater or lesser extent sooner or later.

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[Alex Bluemoon]

A Clayhead? My once burgeoning respect for you is shattered by one shocking revelation.