Many years ago Buckingham Palace was seeking an increase in tax payers’ money at the same time as Crystal Palace Football Club was lying perilously close to the bottom of the (then) 1st division.
As the football season neared its close, towards the end of the second half of a vital match, the centre forward scored a goal giving them hope for survival. The scorer was none other than Gerry Queen who gave rise to this fabulous headline in the Sunday Express: ‘Queen strikes to give hope for struggling Palace’.
Over the years there have been some wonderful headlines: ‘Freddie Starr ate my hamster’ and the like. But on more topical matters this headline from BBC News caught my eye ‘NHS shake-up hands power to GPs’. Now that really is a worry! I thought modern political dogma was to hand power to the patient; but no! It’s the GP who now apparently stands to control the NHS. The BMA is quoted as saying GPs are “ready, willing and able to meet the challenge”. That’s all right then!
But looking closer at what this means we might be forgiven for reminding ourselves of what happened to GP fund holding under the Tories and then the model of practice based commissioning under Labour. Hardly beacons of success.
That was largely not through any failings of the GP’s, many of whom can be heard bemoaning the pressures on their time and being unable to meet the needs of their patients as it is. Unless GP commissioning is done at night or weekends it is difficult how this shake-up can work.
Alternatively, of course, ‘at risk’ managers from the local PCT’s and SHA’s could be brought in to commission health care under the direction of the GP practice.
My nightmare scenario is the same people doing very similar work (and still not very effectively) but in new offices, with new titles, higher salaries, costly IT systems, tortuous negotiations and creating unhelpful tensions between primary and secondary care. But fortunately I read beyond the headline to see that in this ‘shake-up’ the Secretary of State for Health ‘has emphasised the need to liberate the NHS to focus on outcomes and improving results for patients’.
Moving chairs on the Titanic might not be the best way to liberate the NHS. When the Titanic sank a local paper carried this parochial headline ‘Grimsby man hurt in ship tragedy’. Underneath the headline is the real story; and we should read it with considerable interest.
Tags: Commissioning, GPs
