Enfield Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) has put on hold all briefings and consultation events relating to its proposals to tighten access to particular clinical procedures until after the General Election, including the meeting in Cockfosters that was scheduled for Monday 24th April - though it did not announce this in time to prevent some people making a wasted journey.
In view of the CCG's assertions that the proposed changes are based on specialised clinical criteria alone, and that without the intervention of a desk-based "referral service" between GP and hospital specialists, surgeons are prone to carry out operations that are not in the patients' best interests, it seems strange that a purely political event like the forthcoming general election should have any bearing on the subject.
Having said that, the CCG has made no bones about the fact that it is desperate to cut its costs. It blames its huge overspend on surgeons who are "happy" to carry out unnecessary operations, on GPs who prescribe too many items and on various inefficiencies. It doesn't seem to occur to the CCG's managers that since it was set up following the 2012 Health and Social Care Act it simply has never been given enough money to adequately care for the borough's population - and the amount of money provided for NHS is indeed a political issue.
Why do I think this is the case? Well, as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words, so here are some pictures drawn by people in the know.
