The vast majority of GPs – seven out of 10 – believe the Government’s NHS changes will put them in an impossible “conflict of interest” position forced to choose between doctor-patient relationships and hard-headed commercial decisions, according to a major survey of every general practitioner in Britain by their union, the British Medical Association.
The poll was conducted in April and surveyed every GP about workload, morale, changes to primary care due in the Health and Social Care Bill and other issues.
Almost 19,000 out of 46,700 GPs replied – around 40 per cent – in what the BMA said is the biggest exercise of this kind it has undertaken since 2007.
It found 70 per cent of GPs are worried by inherent conflicts of interest in the Government’s planned NHS reforms, 68 per cent specifically cited the damage they feared would be done to patient-doctor relationships.
Further, 69 per cent were concerned at having to both commission – a commercial decision – and to actually provide care.
Dr Laurence Buckman, chairman of the BMA GPs Committee, said: “GPs do not want the trust patients put in them to be damaged by these reforms, yet this is exactly what they fear will happen. The Government must take heed and further revise its plans for the quality premium in particular, to avoid any potential damage to the doctor-patient relationship.”
Meanwhile a committee of MPs criticised the “fragmented and uncoordinated” purchase and management of high value equipment in the NHS which it blamed for “wasted resources and variable standards of service”.
The Commons’ Public Accounts Committee said the NHS has about £1 billion worth of high value equipment such as MRI and CT scanners.
But the then Labour Government’s 2007 decision to leave it to individual health trusts to buy and manage such machines was not very good value for money when the NHS might otherwise not just optimise its purchasing power as a whole but share scarce resources, thus contributing to the £20 billion worth of savings being sought between now and 2015.
Committee chairwoman Margaret Hodge said: “We were shocked by the unacceptable response times for certain conditions. A modern NHS should not allow 50 per cent of people who have a stroke to wait more than 24 hours for a scan. There are unacceptable variations between trusts in the number of scans per (CT) machine, from 7,800 to almost 22,000 a year; opening hours and waiting times. The Department of Health has got to look at how machines can be used more efficiently to make the best use of scarce resources.”
