care last year.
by Darlington MP Alan Milburn.
The government has no power to demand repayment of unspent surpluses - although health ministers insist that the money cannot be pocketed by the doctors themselves, and has to be spent on their practises.
This vast pool of spare cash has rapidly increased.
Rip-off The region facing the biggest rip-off is NE Thames, where the average fund-holding GP clung on to more than £1 of every £6 allocated - a cool £77,000 per doctor.
These figures fuel growing criticism of the controversial system, which gives fundholding GPs a much more generous budget per patient than given to District Health Authorities, but follows this up with only minimal monitoring of their performance.
Questions are being asked in some regions about the apparent link between vast underspending by fundholders and the rapid increase in numbers of fundholders' patients admitted to hospitals as emergencies.
Emergencies bill
Health authorities are required to pick up the bill for all residents who receive emergency hospital care, while fundholders are supposed to pay from their budgets for elective treatment.
The West Midlands Health Monitoring Unit points out that Coventry DHA saw a massive 19% increase in emergency admissions from fundholders' patients in the first year of the scheme, against an increase of just 6.5% from non-fundhold• ers. By contrast elective admissions fundholders decreased by over 13%, comGiven the ore I'm afraid you can't afford to go on living. ain care costs. Mr Frampton. pared with 2% from non-fundholders.
Of course the more publicised aspect of fundholding is the emergence of a 'two tier' service within the NHS, with GPs using their purchasing power to force local Trusts to give preferential treatment to their patients, ahead of others in the queue.
Fast-track
A recent BMA survey of 173 hospitals showed that 73 of them were offering preferential services to fundholders' patients: 41 were offering "fasttrack', more rapid admission. HOME NEWS But this claimed 'advantage' for the patients of fund-holders could soon be wiped out by government proposals to make all GPs fundholders.
Precisely how such a chaotic system could operate alongside District Health Authorities, and with every fundholder trying to score an advantage over every other, has not been explained.
Not everyone can jump the queue at once!
For a FREE copy of Health Emergency ...newspaper. send 25p stamp and your name and address to LHE. 446.
Uxbridge Rd. London
WIZ ONS