Be Afraid
Posted by: Rockingdoc on 29 December 2004
From today, after over 20 years of being on-call, I no longer have responsibility for the provision of "out of hours" medical cover. The responsibility for all cover has shifted to the Primary Care Trust.
The Government offered the option to GPs to "opt out" for a cost of about 9000 GBP p.a. each. My personal belief is that the were taken by surprise when almost the whole profession practicaly snatched their hand off and took the offer.
I think this has been kept quiet and the public are in for a shock when they discover that home visits are a thing of the past. Many GPs have banded together in co-ops for the past few years, but these have been non-profit making arrangements based on goodwill, with the GP still carrying the can at the end of the day. From today it is a paid (skeleton) staff only, mainly nurses giving telephone advice. Additional cover will consist of the provision of an out of hours centre, usually at the "local" hospital, which of course may not be local at all. There simply won't be the staff to allow for visits.
This has come about because a minority of patients abused the out of hours service enough to totally demoralise the GPs over a number of years. To stem the recruitment and retention crisis the Government had to make the offer.
Personally, I am delighted to join the ranks of normal folk who leave work when they go home. Wouldn't want to be a poorly resourced, single parent with a sick child, living at the oppsite end of the borough from the on call centre, in the middle of the night.
My information really only applies to London, don't know what the country mice are up to.
The Government offered the option to GPs to "opt out" for a cost of about 9000 GBP p.a. each. My personal belief is that the were taken by surprise when almost the whole profession practicaly snatched their hand off and took the offer.
I think this has been kept quiet and the public are in for a shock when they discover that home visits are a thing of the past. Many GPs have banded together in co-ops for the past few years, but these have been non-profit making arrangements based on goodwill, with the GP still carrying the can at the end of the day. From today it is a paid (skeleton) staff only, mainly nurses giving telephone advice. Additional cover will consist of the provision of an out of hours centre, usually at the "local" hospital, which of course may not be local at all. There simply won't be the staff to allow for visits.
This has come about because a minority of patients abused the out of hours service enough to totally demoralise the GPs over a number of years. To stem the recruitment and retention crisis the Government had to make the offer.
Personally, I am delighted to join the ranks of normal folk who leave work when they go home. Wouldn't want to be a poorly resourced, single parent with a sick child, living at the oppsite end of the borough from the on call centre, in the middle of the night.
My information really only applies to London, don't know what the country mice are up to.
I would say that the patient can sod off to another €uropean Country for treatment, as is the future common-sense trend. (please no lectures about financing it, it's happening now if youi want it, folk are just too fucking lazy to find out for themselves in general). No great examples of poor little old ladies who survived the blitz please either, Cherry Picking is NHS PFI Territory, ie, lucrative short term ops etc, and many of you pro's out there know it, and are unfortunately unable to change the fact compounding the profession's frustration)am I right or am I right ?
Fritz Von Respecttotherealhero'sbutdoctorsareonlyhumantoo,innit
Fritz Von Respecttotherealhero'sbutdoctorsareonlyhumantoo,innit
quote:
Originally posted by Derek Wright:
Can we afford private care - we have to accept to that ensure a reasonable quality of life in the UK that one will have to pay for medical care,
Why do we have to accept this?
quote:
Last year 03 we were lucky no costs.
And lucky you didn't get the kind of chronic health problems that private wont touch.
quote:
Would the banning of private practice resolved the wait perhaps by a month - but it might have caused the specialist to off sod to another country and so no treatment would have been available
Derek
Where's the evidence that this would happen?
It reminds me of rock stars in the '70 going abroad for tax reasons.
I'm not warming to consultants here.
Stephen