I'm a suspicious sort of soul. When choosing between cock up or conspiracy, I always go for the latter. It does mean that sometimes you are pleasantly surprised when things do not go as badly as you think; but more often it means that you're right and everyone hates you for it. So it came about that when the 'minor ailments' service was brought in in pharmacies, I began to be suspicious. On the face of it, it sounded like a good idea. GPs really don't like being phoned up every five minutes to write out prescriptions for Calpol and the like, and there's no doubt that it did take a burden off them. But it's what went with that. Consulting rooms. Prescribing powers. Hmm. Was this about convenience or was it the government's idea for further dilution of the GP service?
The answer came this week. Lloyd's the big pharmacy chain, has applied to be an 'alternative medical services provider.' It is going to set up consultation rooms where a patient can speak to a virtual doctor online. So instead of going to the doctor you can go to the pharmacist and at the same time you can buy all your lovely drugs from Lloyds instead of those boring generic ones you can get at the local dispensary. Great.
It's going to be particularly interesting how this is going to pan out in Scotland. The SNP has a policy against privatisation in the NHS and in 2007 the attempt to bring in SERCO for Harthill GP practice was closed down very quickly. This is opening up another front and is a direct challenge to the SNP's current attempts to amend the GP contract that allows this. There was always a danger that this would happen, because although the Scottish Government can change our legislation, European legislation states that any business worth more than a certain amount had to be open to tender. GP practices could get round this by being small and it was thought that the relentless march of the health centre and the resulting merging of practices would be the way big business would worm its way in. It looks like they've found a back door. Instead of having to deal with GPs and persuading them to shift to new premises they're doing the process the other way round. And we are going to lose GPs and dilute the service we have.
It was a conspiracy. I was right. And I hate that I'm right..
Tuesday, 1 September 2009
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2 comments:
In Scotland the situation is different. In England the doctors would be trying to run the Pharmacies
Dr John Chisholm was the architect of the GP contract that enabled private companies to buy practising rights from the PCTs. Doctors didn't object because it meant they got paid lots.
The NHS is being destroyed by money - not enough in the right places and too much on offer in the wrong places.
I believe the NHS kept going in the past because it was starved of funds. Now that there is plenty of money, everyone wants a slice of the cake and suddenly everyone is fighting for a piece of the action.
You are right, Big Pharma smells blood - fresh from their killing in the Tamiflu fiasco
I've been talking to someone about the situation and they say that Scotland is different - thank God.
There is an inordinate amount of money sloshing about and yet we are still short of frontline clinical staff. You cannot change a lightbulb in the NHS without putting a tender advert in the European Journal, consulting the lightbulb changing board and getting the PFI contracted lightbulb engineer to do the job at ten times the normal cost. It's got to be sorted.
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