A CRISIS in local medical services is inevitable according to Dearne councillors who are demanding that the area should receive the health care it was promised at the new medical centres.
Coun Alan Gardiner told the Dearne Forum on Monday the shortage of general practitioners could become worse within two years due to retirements.
“With state of the art facilities a major part of the concept was to attract new GPs into the borough and to my knowledge that has not happened,” he said.
“Some of the GPs serving the Dearne are near retirement age, some are over. Who is going to replace them to maintain the service?
“Initially the new centres were to provide local health services to local people and cut out all this time waiting for buses in the freezing cold (to get to Barnsley Hospital), and as we know buses do not turn up.
“I was disgusted to see how the Goldthorpe centre is being run. There was no intercom system and GPs were coming out of the surgery to shout patients in. Some had a different system and asked patients to call the next one in. Facilities are stood there month after month not being used.”
