Hendon MP ANDREW DISMORE sings the praises of polyclinics

When Labour first came to office 11 years ago, I was inundated with complaints about hospital waiting lists.

Patients - especially pensioners - were waiting two years or more for routine operations like hip replacements.

Every winter, Accident & Emergency Depart-ments were in crisis, with day-long waits on trolleys for treatment or a hospital bed.

Now, these waits and delays are very rare, because of Labour investment in the NHS.

By the end of this year, all but a handful of patients will be treated in hospital within 18 weeks of being referred by their GP.

Already, most patients' first hospital out-patient appointment will usually be within two or three weeks, with any tests and treatment following with little waiting.

Now, most grievances that people raise with me are about seeing their GP.

People want appointments that are prompt and convenient. While some doctors think their patients are satisfied, the general picture from a local survey, as well as my postbag, shows otherwise.

Working people should be able to see their doctor without taking time off, or keeping it to a minimum, with early morning, evening, or weekend appointments.

Other professions have offered this service for years: as an MP, I offer an advice surgery on Saturday mornings, too.

So we need to sort this out. Locally, 30 per cent of GP practices are now operating extended hours.

With £400,000 of extra funding committed to Barnet already, this is expected to rise to 50 per cent over the next few months. The money's also there for the other half of doctors, if they want to take it up for the benefit of their patients.

We're also hearing scare stories about polyclinics - a new name for an old concept we've been developing in Barnet since 2002.

Edgware and Finchley Memorial Hospital provides polyclinic services, to GP practices which are too small to provide them, themselves; the larger GP practices can do so, already.

Primary care centres, like at Vale Drive, with others intended for Grahame Park, Crickle-wood and Brunswick Park, will also provide a resource to which GPs can refer patients more locally.

These centres provide a central hub for GPs to network around. No GP practice will be forced into a polyclinic in Barnet.

While big GP practices can offer, within the practice, a wider range of services than the very small ones and are being encouraged to do so (which means the smaller practices' patients need to travel for tests and treatments which the big practices would provide at their surgeries onsite), patients won't have to change doctors, nor will GPs be forced to move to bigger practices, because of polyclinics.

Some doctors may choose to move voluntarily to the primary care centres, especially if their current practice is housed in poor accommodation.

Polyclinics mean more popular hospitals like Edgware and primary care centres like Vale Drive, so isn't that improving services for patients?