Scotland’s new GP contract raises variety of worrying questions on patient care

The same Scottish Government that declared we’d all be running around in electric cars by 2030 now tells us that, from April 2019, our GPS have agreed not to be our primary source of medical aid when we call in at our local surgery.

We’re to be scrutinised in some as-yet undecided way, by a person ‘on the desk’ (or at the end of the phone?) who will decide whether we should see a doctor or a nurse or some other healthcare worker. various questions come rapidly to mind, like:

What medical qualifications can this healthcare director have which enables her/him to decide the best course of action for a potential patient after, say, a short phone conversation and perhaps without any sort of person-to-person contact of some kind?

What training will they have?

What happens if a visitor in the surgery waiting-room refuses to be seen by anyone other than a doctor? Are they to be shown the door or will they be struck off the register for that surgery for being awkwar?

Who takes final responsibility for the patient if they can be ‘shunted around’ a surgery between several healthcare staff without the certain knowledge of a qualified GP? Which one will have responsibility for updating the patient’s records?

Who ‘takes the rap’ if things go wrong? The person on the desk or the practice nurse or the doctor?

While this new and untried system is supposedly to give an easier time to fully qualified doctors, the probability is that it will inadvertently cause daily friction within any normal surgery simply because the proposed contract (like much SNP legislation) has not been thought out fully and properly.

I rather think that the British Medical Association realises what problems will arise for only 39 per cent of doctors bothered to vote on this important matter and those who did vote positively for it numbered only 71.5 per cent of that 39 per cent.

That means that only 27.9 per cent of working doctors gave their backing to this new scheme. Hardly a rousing endorsement.

Sadly (or cunningly), Health Secretary Shona Robison pushed through this piece of contractual legislation by linking it to a guaranteed minimum salary of £80,430 per annum from April 2019.

See you in the queue at the desk.

ARCHIBALD A LAWRIE Church Wynd, Kingskettle, Fife