The
last few days the GPs we are now forced to report on under GMC censorship for
doctors have noted that 2 news organizations have reported that there might
just be a problem with the great non-paying British public getting to see their
GPs.
In
most countries in the world with far better healthcare than that in the UK
there might be a small consideration before demanding an urgent same day
appointment for Tarquin’s asymptomatic rash of 3 years’ duration that has
caused him no problems until someone suggested it might be meningitis.
So
Good Morning Britain (ITV) has reported thus. (Please
be aware there are adverts and you may have to wait to see the full report but
this is commercial for profit organization not the NHS).
The
next day the BBC have now put this little item up and
later that day this piece.
So
to summarize the past few years of Party and press speak.
GPs are idle
overpaid bastards say the press and politicians.
All
those idle over paid GPs have been doing nothing other than trouser the dosh
and ignore patients when in fact they have done more work (number of appointments up 15.7% since 2008), with less funding (10.7% of the NHS budget in 2005-6 compared with
8.4% of the budget in 20011-12) and a workforce decrease of 3% since 2009. In the commercial
world this might be classed as a success.
Idle
overpaid bastards say the press and politicians.
This
is set to get worse because intelligent medical students paying a fortune for qualifications
are going to use the free market to choose their career and repay their student
loans and are choosing not to train as GPs. They may also want to do what
normal people do with their hard earned dosh and buy houses (not practices),
start families and have some time to enjoy them so a 9-5 hospital job with the
odd night on call suddenly seems very attractive compared with a minimum Party
determined day of 08.00 - 18.30 and threat of having to do the same or more 7 days a
week (did we forget the extended Brown shifts on top as well?).
From
meetings we know of GP training schemes that are struggling to fill places and
which are only c 80% full and the reason a little old lady was removed from a
list was because a practice could not replace a GP. If large number of GPs are
set to retire and you cannot fill
enough vacancies to maintain the status quo can anyone guess what might happen?
Politicians
claim an increase in GP numbers but this is just smoke and mirrors as more and
more GPs seek to reduce hours. So let us say that there are 10 GPs working full
time and we increase the number of GPs by 100% to 20 GPs but then all 20 GPs choose
to work half time then the 100% increase in numbers is in fact a 0% increase in
GP availability. This is what has happened at ND Central and in many local
practices as GPs realize the job sucks when it didn’t used to.
Increase
demand, reduce resources and something has to give.
Anyone
still want to be a GP? Anyone in the TriPartite health alliance smelt the
coffee yet? The media only just have but after many years of reporting that everything is rosey.
Praise
be to the Party for once again blaming those who are not the problem for the
problem and in doing so ignoring the problem. It takes 10-11 years to take a
first year medical student and train them to be a GP and the number of GPs
retiring is set to increase year on year until 2022 while GP training schemes
cannot be filled just to maintain the status quo.
You
have been warned comrades things can only get worse while the politicians
continue to fiddle and ignore the fire.
.JPG)
