TY - JOUR T1 - Supermarket medicine? JF - British Journal of General Practice JO - Br J Gen Pract SP - 423 LP - 423 VL - 57 IS - 538 AU - Mike Fitzpatrick Y1 - 2007/05/01 UR - http://bjgp.org/content/57/538/423.abstract N2 - The government's invitation to supermarket chains and retail pharmacies to open up GP surgeries has provoked a generally negative response to what many doctors regard as ‘backdoor privatisation’. Yet, although this sort of political stunt seems unlikely to offer a future for primary health care, it does have the merit of challenging the current framework of GP services within the NHS.When I came into general practice in the early 1980s, the small-shopkeeper model was still dominant. In the inner city areas where I worked, the corner-shop surgery often appeared to be a bastion of poor standards of practice in poor quality premises. For the radical Medical Practitioners Union (MPU), of which I was a rather inactive member, the independent contractor status of the GP was an anachronism, a consequence of the medical profession's reactionary resistance to the concept of the NHS … ER -