Waking up and smelling the coffee - what has happened to the British media this week?

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.