Liverpool Care Pathway - Whatever Happened To The Family Doctor...?

Never in the field of medical practice has so much been paid to so many to do so little. 

The present GP contract is being QOFed -

Full details of the government’s planned changes to the general medical services (GMS) contract for 2013-14 for GPs in England have been unveiled by the Department of Health. They include how the minimum practice income guarantee (MPIG) will be phased out over seven years and how thresholds for 20 Quality and Outcome Framework (QOF) indicators will be raised.  [BMJ Careers]

The humanity is gone. The family doctor is dead. This is the 21st century.

This is The Telegraph -

GPs must learn e-efficiency from Easyjet, says Jeremy Hunt

GPs must take efficiency lessons from Easyjet if they are to provide better care for the elderly, according to the Health Secretary, who has admitted there is no more money to improve matters.

By Stephen Adams, Medical Correspondent

7:37PM GMT 06 Mar 2013

Jeremy Hunt said GP surgeries needed to start offering “e-consultations” to turn 10 minute appointments for minor conditions into those lasting just 60 seconds, if they were to improve care for the most needy groups.

He said there were “substantial savings” to be garnered from putting services online, as pioneered by internet banks and low-cost airlines.

Mr Hunt was speaking at a Royal College of GPs event launching a guide for doctors who are starting to offer online appointments and medical records access.

GPs presented a pilot, in which patients with conditions like hay fever will be encouraged to fill in online forms of symptoms and history, for doctors to review prior to a very brief consultation.

Dr Arvind Madan, a GP with the Hurley Group, said: “We can take a 10 minute appointment, and turn it into a one minute analysis of their history.”

Praising the initiative, Mr Hunt said: “There are three additional things that we need GPs to do, that we don't have any more money to offer for them to do, because the money is not there.

“They are be open longer hours, more proactive management of frail, elderly and people with long term conditions … and more proactive early diagnosis of people in high-risk groups, so we pick up more things like cancer and diabetes.”

He continued: “So it's incredibly important to see if there is a way of turning 10 minutes into one minute.”

Describing the NHS as “a bit behind” other areas when it came to “harnessing the efficiency of IT”, he added: “The encouraging thing is if you look at other industries they have found those efficiency savings.

"So, online banking, online booking of air tickets - everyone would accept that there are substantial savings with the whole Easyjet model."

But Dr Chaand Nagpaul, the British Medical Association's lead on IT, described Mr Hunt’s comparison as “simplistic”, as big NHS users like the elderly often did not have online access.

“What patients and GPs actually want is for consultation times to go up from 10 to 20 minutes,” he claimed.

“Nobody at the BMA is against using technology to save GPs time, but we have to be careful.”

"Yeah I'm an analog man in a digital world
I'm gonna get me a doctor
Who cares what I am
I'm an analog man

"The whole world's living in a digital dream
The horror's not there
It's all on the screen
Makes me forget who I am
I'm an analog man

"Welcome to cyberspace, reality's a fog
Everything's digital I'm still analog
When something goes wrong
You don't have a clue
It's just on the screen
There's nothing to do"

Paraphrased from -
"Analog Man"  - Joe Walsh

Values once held dear are slipping through our fingers like grains of sand...