The new government is continuing to make noises about the NHS moving forward…

The Darzi Review

The Darzi review did not tell us anything we didn’t know and I am questioning the worth of such a report and what the financial costs were in producing it.

Bearing in mind his last review must have been over 14 years ago, he came back with most of the same answers and proposals. We don’t need someone telling us about the problems, but we do need a plan going forward that benefits all.

Wes Streeting’s Latest Opinion

Wes Streeting is not sure about the partnership model going forward in General Practice…!

Well I am!! When you look at primary care against secondary care, it is so much more efficient, and absorbs the majority of the work for a fraction of the NHS budget.

Just suppose the partnership model is scrapped and partners become salaried; the quality of service will go down as there will be no incentives to work the extra hours, or go the extra mile that partners do today.
There would be no penalties for not achieving QOF, or concentrating on disease registers.

The partnership model works by paying by results, unlike secondary care, where the service is expensive to deliver, and where there are little incentives for the staff to work harder.

If the government cannot see the benefits of the partnership model, then we have no hope of getting on top of the worsening NHS crisis.  

Have they thought about how Practice Managers, other clinical and Reception staff etc would get paid, and who would be responsible for employing them? I bet they haven’t.

Scrapping the partnership model would see many partners retiring and seeking work outside the NHS.
Taking this a further step forward, would current partnerships be bought out by the NHS? Would premises be purchased from those partnerships that have invested in their infrastructure? Where is that money going to come from?

Getting rid of partnership model will be the death of the NHS as we know it now.

Secondary care is poorly managed and money can be seen to be wasted. For example I recently had an ECG at the surgery where I work and my own GP asked for a copy and referred me to the rapid access clinic.  

The hospital would not accept the ECG and I had to go to my own doctor to get it redone - a waste of time and money, and that’s just one example.

If secondary care was controlled better then some of this wastage could be avoided.

We need to get away from thinking that the NHS is free at the point of entry - it is not, we pay for it, when we shop, eat out, when we fill up our cars. We are Taxed! Taxed! Taxed!

We need to fight any thought of any abolition going ahead, and we need to stick together and bring our patients into the debate.