FAMILY doctors in Huddersfield will be told in April who will run the NHS in this area.

NHS Kirklees says it will make an announcement then on which GP groups are lined up to take over the running of the NHS in April.

Helena Corder, Director of Corporate Services, said the trust was working with GPs to finalise shadow arrangements for the handover.

The government’s “Liberating the NHS” White Paper has set out the transfer of £80bn away from Primary Care Trusts to GPs, who would band together in consortia to commission services.

It means groups of local doctors will take over all responsibility for the billions of pounds which deliver almost every aspect of health care.

But GP and nursing bosses have called the plan “extraordinarily risky” at a time when the NHS is losing 45% of its management resources and facing the toughest financial constraints for a decade.

Dr Robert Heys was a consultant gynaecologist, a Huddersfield patients’ group leader and campaigner.

He said: “I’m in favour of GPs having more say in the allocation of cash but I share the concern that the present measures are going ahead too rapidly and could lead to confusion, creating an adverse effect initially on patient care.

“The problem is that in my opinion GPs’ main concern is patient care and they do not in general consider it part of their duties to make accounting decisions regarding payment for individual services.

“In consequence they will not feel able to carry it out satisfactorily.

“The scheme should have been tried out on an experimental basis in small areas before the full scale implementation.”

The Prime Minister announced yesterday that 141 GP consortia, serving more than half of the population of England, have signed up as “pathfinders” to pilot the arrangements before 2013.

Union leaders added their backing to the health chiefs’ concerns, saying that the plan was ill-timed when the NHS was being asked to save £20bn.

But David Cameron yesterday supported the reforms, speaking of his political and personal “passion” for modernisation and declaring that “we should not put this off any longer”.

An NHS Confederation paper has been released following a summit of healthcare managers, doctors’ leaders, patients groups and policy experts last November to discuss the implications of proposals.

It described the reforms as “undoubtedly the biggest shake-up of the NHS in its history”.

Unless large numbers of GPs get actively involved in the new system there is a danger of “potentially overwhelming” pressures leading to “widespread financial problems... sub-optimal performance and longer waiting times”, it warned.

Health expert, Emeritus Professor Peter Bradshaw, of the University of Huddersfield, has grave concerns.

He said: “All governments love to tinker with the health service. The GP consortia however is a form of creeping privatisation.

“We have a PCT which has taken three years to bed down and is now starting to perform very well against its targets. This will be disbanded and replaced with umpteen privately-owned organisations.

“My view is that GPs don’t do accounting and they don’t want the hassle of administering this but they would want the rewards.

“This could go back to the postcode lottery. At a time of zero growth in the NHS but with demand expected to rise these organisations may look at things like cosmetic surgery, sterilisation reversal and IVF and think that something has to give”.