Medical musings: GPs should be the orchestra

Thanks for writing this and I hope it is taken on board by those who are driving the changes in primary care. May I though reflect that one unspoken concern is that nobody polices primary care as we are independent contractors and whether a practice provides extra services (e.g. ear syringing) or works more sessions for their income is not checked.

In the past the family practitioner committee was feared as it had power and sanctions. With the recent bad publicity about access and the numbers of face-to-face consultations your comments about being on PCN committees vs seeing patients and offering continuity are so pertinent.

There is no dispute that demand greatly exceeds capacity in the whole of the NHs but we have just had an LMC vote to reduce working day to 9 to 5 without any loss of income.

Could GP funding be re arranged so that instead of paying for pointless and often dangerous targets (HBa1 in the elderly as an example) they paid a huge dividend for continuity and access?

GP partnerships have in the main always responded well to funding related work.