Xavier Nalletamby has been elected chairman of the Brighton and Hove transitional GP Consortium.
About 135 of some 400 eligible family doctors, practice nurses and practice managers voted in the contest for the £90,000-a-year role.
The majority chose Dr Nalletamby, of St Peter’s Medical Centre, in Oxford Street, Brighton, who has worked locally for 25 years.
Dr Manas Sikdar, of Albion Street Surgery in Albion Street, Brighton, was runner up.
The job, which is expected to take three days a week, is crucial to the government’s proposed reforms of the National Health Service.
The new chairman will be expected to be the public voice of Brighton and Hove GPs and to be able to explain the reforms affecting the NHS.
The reforms are contained in the Health and Social Care Bill.
Prime Minister David Cameron said this week that the bill would be put on hold for a few months while the government conducted a listening exercise.
Many in the medical profession have concerns about the reforms, even those who believe that the present arrangements need to be improved.
Opposition
The Conservatives’ coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats, have expressed opposition to the reforms.
And before the general election last year the Tories promised no more top-down reforms of the NHS, which has been reorganised several times over the past 20 years.
Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary, said that his reforms would bring greater public accountability to the NHS.
He also said that it would give family doctors – GPs – a much stronger role in deciding what services were necessary and how much they should cost.
One reason for this is that ministers want fewer patients treated in hospitals because they believe that it is cheaper and sometimes more effective to treat them at or nearer to home.
At the moment GPs operate as individuals and by surgery, with spending and commissioning decisions taken by each area’s primary care trust (PCT).
The government wants to abolish PCTs – and the regional strategic health authorities (SHAs) – in part to save money on administration.
