DOCTORS and patients in Waverley are being shortchanged by West Surrey Health Authority, which is trying to pocket money earmarked for GP surgeries, according to a doctors' committee.

The West Surrey Local Medical Committee says £0.5 million which was supposed to go to surgeries to help pay for staff and equipment could be poured instead into coping with the health authority's £4.5 million overspend.

The medical committee, which represents all doctors and NHS staff working in health centres and GP surgeries, says the money was given to the health authority by the government to help pay for patient care, not to service the authority's budget.

"Five per cent of this year's primary care budget in West Surrey is about to be given up to the health authority overspend, when the government had earmarked it for primary care purposes and presumed that was its destination," said Dr Edward Tobin, chairman of the medical committee.

"This budget is there to reimburse GP practices for infrastructure costs that they have already borne and is part of the convoluted GP payment system.

"The largest part of this budget relates to staff costs and is recognised, even by the Department of Health. as in need of extra investment."

Dr Tony Welch from the committee told The Herald the cash should stay with the GPs for whom it was originally intended.

In the Waverley area 16 practices with 82 GPs, serving about 160,000 patients, would be affected if the health authority went ahead with the plan, he said.

The final decision was due to be taken by the West Surrey Health Authority at a meeting as The Herald went to press this week.

Dr Welch said this was not the first time the authority had proposed taking money from the GP budget, but he was hoping that if doctors became aware of the scale of the problem they would band together to fight the move.

"Part of the way GPs are paid is that they are getting reimbursement for the cost of providing premises, staff and computers," he said.

"There is a budget there to reimburse them for that cost. Anything they don't claim back, they are then paying for out of their own pockets.

"We are saying that provided no GP is given more than they have spent on their staff budget, any money that is left over should be given to practices.

"We could take this nearly £500,000, divide it by the number of patients and hand it back to the doctors according to the number of patients on their list. That would be a very fair way of giving it back to patient care.

"New National Service Frameworks, the National Plan and patient expectations have all increased, which all means GPs are having to meet greater demands."

West Surrey Health Authority has run into trouble financially because of an overspend in acute hospital budgets and the drugs budget, which has been higher than anticipated.

Dr Welch said that the high cost of living in the county presented problems for doctors in recruiting and retaining staff to work in surgeries.

"My GP members report to me that they have difficulties in retaining staff because of high salaries elsewhere," he added.

"GPs can't provide the same level of service if they can't afford to take on staff to provide those services."

"Even if the health authority decides that they can do it this time, we may still decide to fight the issue because they can only take this money if everybody agrees it can go.

"It will look bad if GPs have to dip into their own pockets to provide care for their patients."

West Surrey Health Authority member Peter Reeves told a meeting of the authority in November that the body was facing a projected overspend of £4.2 million, of which £3.5 million was attributable to prescribing costs.

A programme of action had been agreed to cut the overspend by the management teams of the health authority and the primary care groups to try to cut costs and make savings.

The authority says that the General Medical Services budget shows a forecast underspend of £496,000 for a number of reasons.

These include, the authority says, lower rents than anticipated at the start of the year.

The health authority said the Local Medical Committee had been asked to review its stance on the GP budgets.

It could not release more money unless and until it had a recovery plan in place to tackle the deficit as a whole, the authority said.