Move towards primary care

From Edward White MCSP, Huntingdon Crescent, Sheffield.

WE will need more GPs in the future (Jayne Dowle, The Yorkshire Post, February 4), but this additional support is long overdue and is part of the plan to move services from hospitals to primary care.

Twenty years ago something similar was developing when GPs were fundholders, a system which was abolished by the last Labour government purely for ideological reasons. In my view a very retrograde step, so we are only now re-establishing something similar. With regards to her son’s referral for physiotherapy, a profession I worked in for over 40 years, this is the way the NHS works as the GP acts as a gatekeeper controlling access to other services.