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GP Dr Sam Everington, who once slept on the street to demand NHS reform, talks to Neil Roberts about why he is thinking positive in the current crisis.
'I am always an optimist,' says Tower Hamlets CCG chairman Dr Sam Everington. 'In a crisis, there is always an opportunity.'
We meet in the CCG offices at Mile End Hospital, in London's East End, a day after the RCGP published its latest bleak research on GP funding.
While the former BMA deputy chairman and pioneer behind the celebrated Bromley-by-Bow integrated health and community centre recognises the crisis in the NHS and predicts that financial pressures will worsen, he also sees an opportunity for change.
Health reforms
A former Labour health policy adviser who initially backed Andrew Lansley's health reforms but later reversed his stance, Dr Everington says: 'I've never known so much interest in primary care.'
Dr Everington, who became a barrister in the late 1970s, made headlines as a trainee doctor in the 1980s when he led a midwinter sleep-out protest against the 84-hour working week.
He sealed his reputation as a crusading doctor in the 1990s, with...