Federation of Independent Practitioner Organisations
(FIPO)

News was broken in the Hospital Doctor newspaper (www.hospital-doctor.cc) on 12th October with a follow up Editorial on 19th October 2000 about FIPO, which is still an embryonic organisation. The proposal to form one large unifying body to represent all doctors (consultants and GPs) who work in the private sector came from the London Consultants' Association and was approved at the LCA Annual General Meeting in March 2000. We are in the process of setting up this body and have had overwhelming support from everyone concerned. All speciality groups have been approached although some do not have any private practice committee to represent their views. We would have preferred to finalise the FIPO funding and legal technicalities and to be well established before announcing the fact but inevitably the news leaked out.

Nevertheless, the feedback on FIPO has been very positive and it should be up and running in the next couple of months. The remit will be to support the highest standards of clinical care, governance and audit in the private sector and to act as the final common pathway for the profession in dealing with outside bodies. More of this will follow later but the problems were well phrased in the Hospital Doctor articles, as was our purpose of trying to allow doctors to gain more control of the agenda in the constantly changing aspects of private practice.

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