Why do health bosses waste so much GP time?

SHOUlD you require evidence of the utter contempt in which senior nHS officials hold the public, look no further than a ‘peer review’ scheme being rolled out next week.

the new plans require GPs to seek approval from a panel, made up of other doctors, before being able to refer patients for all non-urgent hospital appointments. this means that referrals for things such as X-rays, hip and knee surgery, and cataracts may be rejected by a group of people who have never seen the patient. they also will not review the patients’ medical notes, but instead base the decision on the referral letter.

the patient’s GP will retain responsibility and make final decisions, but this is still a kick in the teeth for GPs and shows the thinly-veiled loathing nHS bosses have for clinicians these days.

they are an irritation, what with all their referring patients on to other doctors, and nHS bosses will do anything they can to neuter them because they have the best interests of patients — rather than a balance sheet — at heart. THIS

comes as it was announced this week that the nHS will pay £100 million to agencies to recruit 3,000 GPs from overseas amid a growing recruitment crisis hitting the profession.

Is it any wonder our home-grown doctors don’t want to be GPs when they apparently can’t even be trusted to know when a patient needs to see a specialist?

By and large, the GPs I know are dedicated and hard-working.

they do their absolute best despite some pretty testing circumstances and they care deeply about their patients. they also know them better than any panel does: after all, it’s their job to assess patients and decide the best course of action.

the peer review scheme flies in the face of this. And it’s yet more red tape.

the last thing GPs need is yet another layer of bureaucracy. It defies belief that when doctors on the front line are having to contend with so much, they are given yet another set of hoops to jump through. this is only going to cause frustration and anger.

So why bother doing it? If you listen to the official line, the purpose is to ‘support’ GPs and ensure that patients don’t make unnecessary trips to hospital.

Please! Who are they trying to kid? It is clear that this is going to delay patients getting treatment, increase the risk of things deteriorating or something serious happening and result in misery and yet more headaches as doctors and patients negotiate yet more paperwork and box-ticking.

And to add salt to the wound, because the nHS is devolved, it will happen only in england.

So what are we saying here is that english GPs can’t be trusted to make clinically appropriate referrals, but those in Wales, Scotland and northern Ireland can. Is that really the case?

let’s be honest, we all know what’s really going on here. this isn’t about ensuring evidencebased medicine or that patients get the best possible care. this is about one thing: money. the real purpose of these panels is to reduce the number of hospital referrals, isn’t it?

Of course. But rather than insulting our intelligence by trying to give it to us as something else, something for our benefit, why can’t the nHS officials and the Government just be honest and straight with us about the real motivation behind this.

Why can’t they just stand up and say that there isn’t enough money, that we are reaching a crisis point in the nHS, and it has now got to the stage where they are trying to find ways to prevent people getting treatment for nonurgent problems?

We actually need them to say this. We need them to clarify the problems the nHS is facing so that we can have a serious debate about the future of our healthcare.

this debate will never happen while we’re not told the real reasons behind schemes like this. WITH the 20th anniversary of Princess Diana’s death this week, there’s been much discussion about her legacy. As a doctor, there is no doubt in my mind what this is for me. For the younger generation, it’s hard to imagine quite the fear that HIV/Aids generated. I remember at primary school being told that under no circumstances should we share drinks containers in case we caught it from them, and there being much discussion about whether it was safe to use the same toilet seat. It was truly petrifying. Yet in April 1987, Princess Diana was photographed touching an HIV positive man on a visit to a hospital. It was reported around the world. In one single gesture, she showed that this was a condition that needed our compassion and understanding, not fear and ignorance. Medical sociologists now credit her taking up the plight of those with HIV with a shift in public opinion around the disease. In this way she did more than any other individual or charity in tackling the stigma in those dark, scary times.