GP ‘Uberisation’ will drive doctors away

I’VE RELISHED the Westminster farrago as much as the next current affairs broadcaster. The rotating cast of dramatis personae is a gift to TV and radio. There’s no need to ferret about behind the sofa for toothsome content when the PM is making Mandelsonian pronouncements one minute and doing the opposite 12 hours later. In my line of work it’s far too easy to sit back and enjoy the farce, wiHthuaJibnotaxoof Maltesers on the lap, forgetting in the fun of the fray the hideous impact on all our lives.

One story really should have leapt from the front pages straight into our hearts recently, but was relegated to the wild week’s murky margins. Millions of us don’t know our GPs. All that cosy Dr Finlay’s Casebook cradle-to-grave continuity, whereby your family doctor knew your grandparents, delivered your mum and was acquainted with you nine months before your birth, is an inaccurate anachronism.

Now, if we’re lucky enough to score an appointment with our general practice we’re likely to have to blurt our symptoms and bare our souls to a stranger. Worse, even if we find said stranger sympathetic, we stand almost zero chance of ever encountering him or her again.

The Health and Social Care Committee’s report on the “Uberisation” of the family doctor service concludes that GPs who have no relationship with their patients are, through no fault of their own, a serious risk to health.

OF COURSE we’d all love to have a doctor with whom we can relax, a person familiar with our penchants and peccadilloes, an avuncular character with our best interests at heart. It would be a pleasure to commit our boils, bunions and bronchitis to tried and trusted hands. To be cared for by someone who cares.

Yet we’re now in a scenario where we’re no more guaranteed to see the same doctor twice than the same Uber driver, and it’s dangerous.To take one example, we’re told to check our breasts often so we can detect changes or abnormalities immediately. How can our GPs possibly diagnose our ailments if they don’t have a clue what is normal for us? They are doomed to miss clues and fail to spot tell-tale signs.

There’s a devastating shortage of family doctors. The impact on our health and lifespans is already of acute concern.

While Westminster wonks are jockeying for preferment, we are being short-changed and our disgusted doctors are deserting the NHS in droves.