GPs 'could become as hard to find as NHS dentists'

Finding a GP in London could soon be as difficult as signing up with an NHS dentist, a health expert warns.

Professor Allyson Pollock said Londoners will suffer if more private companies are allowed to run GP surgeries. Her warning comes after three surgeries in Camden were taken over by American firm United Health Europe. Since then a baby clinic has closed and patients say they are angry and confused.

The consequences for patients could be dire, said Professor Pollock, head of the Centre for International Public Health Policy at Edinburgh University. She added: "You're going to see far fewer GPs per head of population, many more nurses and lesser-trained staff and you're going to get decreased access to GPs."

Asked if problems hitting NHS dentistry would spread to doctors, she said: "I think the parallel is an absolute fit ... where people have no access to NHS dentistry or when they do, they find they have payments, charges, top-ups."

The three surgeries in Camden - Brunswick Medical Centre, King's Cross Road Practice and Camden Road Practice - will feature in a BBC1 documentary, Inside Out, at 7.30pm tonight. In it, mother Collette Bell, 39, says: "The baby clinic has been a big change. You have to get up really early [to get to the new clinic] because there are lots of people. The staff say, 'Why are they sending you down here when there are already so many people here as it is?'"