Plan for GPs seems to have been lost in ether

WHAT’S happened to the Government’s much heralded plan of action to get GPs to carry out more face-toface consultations with patients?

It seems to have disappeared into the ether. As things stand, to use a tennis analogy, it’s game, set and match to the GPs, who far from expressing any willingness to cooperate, have backed their union’s call, the BMA, for industrial action to oppose the Government’s proposals.

Can someone remind Sajid Javid, the Health Secretary, this is not an issue that can be put on the back burner, because lives have been, and are being, lost because of this ongoing patient neglect?

At the first whiff of grapeshot, the Government has cowered, and incredulously, is sanctioning the temporary abandonment of some routine medical checks so GPs can concentrate on delivering the booster jabs, at £15 a shot, the vast majority of which, to date, have not been given by GPs, (I’ve had three jabs which were all administered by a nurse) so who will trouser the bonus?

£100,000 plus average salary, no routine face-to-face appointments, no routine medical checks, blood pressure and blood tests – (it’s now normal for surgeries to advise patients to buy a blood pressure monitor and take their own readings or visit the pharmacy, at cost, and forward the readings to the medical practice.

No wonder people, particularly the elderly, many of whom don’t have smartphones, just don’t bother. How shortsighted when you consider that the treatment of high blood pressure prevents strokes, and now a £15 financial bribe to deliver the booster programme, increased to £20 on a Sunday. As Del Boy would say: “Lovely Jubbly!”

Peter Henrick