GPs’ concerns led to government action in 7 days. So what next?
The turnaround was astoundingly quick: from news story to government intervention in just one week. Health secretary Andrew Lansley’s decision to order PCTs not to blanket ban GP diagnostic scans came...
View ArticleHit-and-miss access for COPD care comes as no surprise
Sadly, I was not shocked by the findings from my investigation that showed GPs face huge gaps in COPD funding for and access to pulmonary rehabilitation services. Stories about PCTs failing to...
View ArticleDon’t blame GPs for poor flu jab uptake
The government should think twice before blaming GPs for too few pregnant women having the flu vaccine, especially as it has done so little to address women’s concerns over vaccination in pregnancy....
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Evidence for telecare? That’s classified
You wouldn’t buy a car without first checking it starts. So why should we take politicians at their word over telehealth when potentially billions of pounds of NHS money are at stake? Care services...
View ArticleReferral pressure threatens patient trust
When does safeguarding NHS resources become an excuse for denying patients the care they need?For many GPs, the feeling that their practice is being pressured, in cases inappropriately, to cut...
View ArticleTelehealth works, sort of. But is that enough for a national roll-out?
The UK medical profession can be cautiously optimistic about the first large-scale evidence for a technology that could come to define 21st century Western medicine. A study published in the BMJ has...
View ArticleLonger consultation plans are more pie in the sky than blue-sky
Fifteen-minute consultations may sound great to patients, but there simply aren’t enough hours in the day or GPs in the surgery to make it a realistic aim. Unperturbed, the RCGP has said it will...
View ArticleThe NHS health checks programme is a mess
The NHS health check programme seems little more than an afterthought in many parts of England. A GP investigation has found most PCTs failed to offer enough vascular checks in 2011/12, the last year...
View ArticleSorry, you’re not yet blind enough
A study into cataract rationing is an astonishing insight into all that is unfair and unethical about today’s cut-price NHS. You’re 76 years old. You live by yourself, but you’re mobile and like to get...
View ArticleWhy did it take seven years to act on LARC training?
GPs have been frustrated at how difficult it has been to access LARC training since NICE called for greater use of the devices in 2005. On Wednesday, GP revealed that the RCGP and the Faculty of Sexual...
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