Tuesday 13 May 2014

Good to see that GPs still remember The Founding Principles of The NHS

From Wiki:

[In 1948] After 18 months of ongoing dispute between the Ministry of Health and the BMA, Bevan finally managed to win over the support of the vast majority of the medical profession by offering a couple of minor concessions, but without compromising on the fundamental principles of his NHS proposals.

Bevan later gave the famous quote that, in order to broker the deal, he had "stuffed their mouths with gold".


From The Daily Mail:

In a speech last night Mr Miliband said it was a 'scandal' that many patients have to wait days to be seen by a GP, and said his party would plough hundreds of millions of pounds into cutting waiting times.

He claimed the £100million a year needed to fund shorter waiting times would be found by cutting back on NHS red tape and highly-paid consultants.

But Maureen Baker, chairman of the RCGP, said the money was not enough to fulfil the pledge. She told BBC Radio 4's Today programme:

"The £100 million is a start and it's a welcome start. It's not actually anywhere near enough to give any sort of guarantee. When you look at it, it's around about £10,000 per practice. It certainly won't go anywhere near employing at practice level more nurses, more GPs.

"At the moment the share of NHS funding that goes to general practice is just over 8 per cent. We see about 90 per cent of all NHS consultations. We believe that our share should be around about 11 per cent."

8 comments:

Curmudgeon said...

And there was me thinking Labour had already made GPs one of the most highly paid groups in the public sector.

Mark Wadsworth said...

C, ah yes, the crazy days of good old Iron Chancellor Brown, when he restricted GP's to a modest pay rise from £50,000 to £100,000 in the space of a year.

Bayard said...

C, presumably that's why there are so few of them now.

Tim Almond said...

B,

The problem there is that we now have huge numbers of women training to be GPs, then they work for a few years, have sprogs, go part time and retire earlier than men.

I seem to recall that it causes a reduction of around 15% of capacity.

(the whole idea of GPs is outdated and we should be creating more junior specialists - we seem to be fine at managing to see specialists about our eyes and teeth, or going to the sexual health clinic if we think we've got the clap, why do we see a GP about our ears instead of an ear specialist?)

Mark Wadsworth said...

TS: "the whole idea of GPs is outdated..."

Exactly.

In Germany there are no GPs as such. You cut out the middleman and go straight to the ear-nose-throat doctor; the eye doctor; the gynaecologist; the skin and hair doctor; the bumps and sprains doctor etc.

Lola said...

Did I tell you I met the bloke from the BMA who brokered New Labours GP's salary negotiations? he told me that he told them not to negotiate at all - just bite their arms off at the shoulder and take the offer.

What's the difference between Tescos and the NHS? You can get service and pretty well whatever you want at any time you want it and it doesn't kill you.

Bayard said...

TS: "the whole idea of GPs is outdated..."

However, you do have to have a doctor who can tell someone who has no idea what is wrong with them what they are suffering from. Mind you, GP's aren't always able to do this. Last time I saw one, I had a better idea of what was wrong with me than he did.

Mark Wadsworth said...

L, you really should do a blog post on that.

B, yes, but all these semi-specialised doctors know enough to send a patient to a more appropriate doctor:

"No madame, there is nothing wrong with your eyes, but your entire skin appears to be covered in scabs. I recommend you see Mr Skin Doctor Schmidt."