Tim Farron asks for minister’s support in GP surgery campaign

Local MP Tim Farron has urged ministers in the Department for Health and Social Care to help reverse controversial changes which mean that many patients in North Cumbria can no longer get follow-up blood tests at their local GP surgeries.

Historically, GP practices in the area have provided this type of care locally so that patients do not have to travel to hospital for routine procedures.

But from September, some GP surgeries have stopped providing this type of work due to huge pressures.

Speaking during Health and Social Care Questions in Parliament today, Tim said: “Does the Minister agree that it is completely wasteful to make cancer patients who need to go for chemotherapy in Carlisle on a Wednesday but who live in, say, Kirkby Stephen to have to travel to Carlisle on the day or on the day before to get their bloods taken? 

“Why is that? Because the local hospital will no longer fund the local GP surgery in Kirkby Stephen or Appleby to take their bloods there. 

“Is it not wrong that those GP surgeries can no longer provide secondary healthcare blood services in their own settings in people’s own communities?”

The Minister of State for Health, Karin Smyth agreed that the decision was causing “damage” to patients in Cumbria, and called for the situation to “end”.

She said: “As he often does, the honourable gentleman highlights in his own very rural constituency some of the fundamental problems at the heart of our NHS. 

“That is why we are reforming it, ensuring that we move hospital services from hospitals into the community and developing neighbourhood health services. 

“We are also looking at the financial flows in the system that lead to these sorts of perverse incentives and funding arrangements, which do damage to his constituents, as they do to many others and to rural and coastal communities. That is why we highlighted that in the 10-year plan. We need to see the end of such examples.”