Summer has truly arrived, and after the sort of weekend that makes you glad to be alive – sitting in my garden enjoying the sunshine – I’ve spent much of this week in the stifling heat of London.
Unlike the pastoral bliss of Birmingham, the College is sweltering under the heat. The lack of air conditioning, and the resultant awful conditions our staff are currently experiencing, has only reinforced the need to move to more suitable premises.
Fortunately, the first phase in our historic move is just around the corner. From August, and for the subsequent two years from then we shall be relocated to our temporary ‘swing space’ at St Katherine Docks.
The move is beginning to feel very real, and with this comes excitement. However, as with any big change, there will be small sacrifices to be made, and for the two years at St Katherine Docks there will be no overnight accommodation. This will necessitate a change in working practices until we move into the new building at Euston Road, and to address this we are planning a new section of the RCGP website in order to keep the membership and staff alike up-to-date. The site will be live from the middle of June.
I urge all of you to submit entries for the new RCGP Caring About Carers Award - run in partnership with The Princess Royal Trust for Carers - which was reported in this month’s RCGP News. We GPs play a vital role in encouraging carers to look after their own health, as well as providing support to help them in their caring role, so I urge all of you to take part. Nominations for the award close on 11 June, and more information is available at http://www.rcgp.org.uk/.
The Spring Meeting earlier this month went brilliantly well, and I enjoyed immensely Sir John Tooke’s fascinating lecture on the personalisation of diabetes care. It was really great to see so many new members and fellows, and their families, and I was so impressed that so many doctors are so keen to get involved. It makes me feel really proud that we’ve managed to promote this initiative, and in doing so become a more inclusive and welcoming college.
You may have seen an article recently in Pulse about the shortage of doctors putting themselves forward for RCGP Fellowship. Fellowship is a wonderful thing: it’s an indicator that of a doctor providing high quality general practice above and beyond expectations. I’d urge all of you who have been a member of over five years to put yourselves forward. I was humbled at the Spring Meeting to be shaking hands with men and women who’d done such wonderful things in clinical care and research, and was so pleased that, through fellowship we can recognise and thank them for their hard work. The College draws its strength from the quality of its members and fellows, and because of them it is a force for good, a force for a change, and a source of the clinical leaders the NHS needs.
Thursday 27 May 2010
Friday 14 May 2010
The Lib-Con Coalition
This is my first message since the General Election, and the formation of the new UK Government. The makeup of the new blue-and-yellow, Lib-Con health team for England is becoming clear. Congratulations to Andrew Lansley, who has become Secretary of State after many years in the shadowing role.
Andrew has an incredible knowledge of the NHS and healthcare generally, and over the last few years I have spent a lot of time talking to him, his team and indeed, as you know, to the health ministers in the old Government. I look forward to working with new team.
I am very pleased that the new administration is continuing to promote our vision of the role of the GP – Andrew really does understand the role of the generalist and we both share a belief that GPs should be leading at all levels in the NHS and take more responsibility for commissioning care.
As you know, we have been promoting the role of GP federations. I believe that federations will play an increasingly important role in the NHS, with GPs working collaboratively to provide a wider range of services in their communities, and to move more care out of hospitals. I want to make it clear in this message that we support the continuation of small practices, because the evidence is that the patients like small practices, and we know that the quality of care can be excellent, continuity is important to patients, and that patients like the personalised care that they provide. Practices working more closely together in federations – whilst not losing their identities – will allow more care to be provided closer to home. It will also help us address the issues of access to GPs and provide a solution perhaps to the practice boundary issue.
With this in mind I hosted this week a working meeting on federations, which will be reported in Pulse and RCGP News over the next few weeks. Laurence Pike, a GP in Lincolnshire described how Lincolnshire GPs had grasped the nettle and taken control in their local area, including their local community hospital. In doing so, he said, they’d revolutionised the service available to patients in their rural area. The federation in Croydon, led by Agnelo Fernandes, has made brilliant advances in a totally different environment. As you will be aware, Agnelo’s federation is a HSJ prize-winner for his work on improving patient access to diagnostics.
I was thrilled to hear at that meeting of the commitment and leadership of a number of GPs, and I was pleased that the NHS North West CEO, Mike Farrar, had become a strong advocate for GPs taking this federated agenda forward. We also have strong support from the NHS Confederation.
I am really optimistic for the future, particularly as my conversation with the new Secretary of State this morning reconfirmed his support for the leadership role of GPs, for federations, and for moving care closer to home.
The Daily Mail, however, appears to be at it again: last week, they were really good at helping me debunk the myths surrounding celebrity diets (my daughters were amused to see my health advise alongside pictures of Gwyneth Paltrow and Jennifer Aniston), but on today’s front page they led with an inflammatory piece about GPs out-of-hours care.
Because of my interest in out-of-hours care, and the report I co-authored with David Colin-Thomé for the last Government, I have kept close interest in how we can improve the quality of care for patients. I spoke to all of the political parties before the election and as you know, the College continues to be involved in DH discussions on out-of-hours and improving out-of-hours training. Andrew Lansley’s position – he assures me – is the same as ours. We both believe that doctors working in and out of hours in the UK must speak English of an appropriate standard. He also agrees that GPs should be involved in commissioning care out of hours. He reiterated his belief that GPs should not be forced to work out of hours if they do not want to, but hoped that more would want to get involved once they had more say in the commissioning of care and the design of services.
As I have said for many years, the key to the success of the NHS is to get GPs in leadership positions, locally, regionally and nationally. As GPs we have a good idea what patients need. I believe that with appropriate support we are capable of commissioning better services for our patients. This includes out-of-hours care. All of you will recall in our manifesto a call for:
“Better round-the-clock care for patients
Every patient deserves high-quality care in and out of hours. GPs must be more involved in local decision making and in the commissioning of out-of-hours services to deliver the highest-quality care around the clock.”
I look forward to working with the new health team in England, and continuing to work with the health teams in the other countries on other important aspects of our manifesto in the months and years to come.
Thanks as always for your support. I value your opinions and feedback enormously, and I urge you to get in touch if you have any comments or questions for me.
Andrew has an incredible knowledge of the NHS and healthcare generally, and over the last few years I have spent a lot of time talking to him, his team and indeed, as you know, to the health ministers in the old Government. I look forward to working with new team.
I am very pleased that the new administration is continuing to promote our vision of the role of the GP – Andrew really does understand the role of the generalist and we both share a belief that GPs should be leading at all levels in the NHS and take more responsibility for commissioning care.
As you know, we have been promoting the role of GP federations. I believe that federations will play an increasingly important role in the NHS, with GPs working collaboratively to provide a wider range of services in their communities, and to move more care out of hospitals. I want to make it clear in this message that we support the continuation of small practices, because the evidence is that the patients like small practices, and we know that the quality of care can be excellent, continuity is important to patients, and that patients like the personalised care that they provide. Practices working more closely together in federations – whilst not losing their identities – will allow more care to be provided closer to home. It will also help us address the issues of access to GPs and provide a solution perhaps to the practice boundary issue.
With this in mind I hosted this week a working meeting on federations, which will be reported in Pulse and RCGP News over the next few weeks. Laurence Pike, a GP in Lincolnshire described how Lincolnshire GPs had grasped the nettle and taken control in their local area, including their local community hospital. In doing so, he said, they’d revolutionised the service available to patients in their rural area. The federation in Croydon, led by Agnelo Fernandes, has made brilliant advances in a totally different environment. As you will be aware, Agnelo’s federation is a HSJ prize-winner for his work on improving patient access to diagnostics.
I was thrilled to hear at that meeting of the commitment and leadership of a number of GPs, and I was pleased that the NHS North West CEO, Mike Farrar, had become a strong advocate for GPs taking this federated agenda forward. We also have strong support from the NHS Confederation.
I am really optimistic for the future, particularly as my conversation with the new Secretary of State this morning reconfirmed his support for the leadership role of GPs, for federations, and for moving care closer to home.
The Daily Mail, however, appears to be at it again: last week, they were really good at helping me debunk the myths surrounding celebrity diets (my daughters were amused to see my health advise alongside pictures of Gwyneth Paltrow and Jennifer Aniston), but on today’s front page they led with an inflammatory piece about GPs out-of-hours care.
Because of my interest in out-of-hours care, and the report I co-authored with David Colin-Thomé for the last Government, I have kept close interest in how we can improve the quality of care for patients. I spoke to all of the political parties before the election and as you know, the College continues to be involved in DH discussions on out-of-hours and improving out-of-hours training. Andrew Lansley’s position – he assures me – is the same as ours. We both believe that doctors working in and out of hours in the UK must speak English of an appropriate standard. He also agrees that GPs should be involved in commissioning care out of hours. He reiterated his belief that GPs should not be forced to work out of hours if they do not want to, but hoped that more would want to get involved once they had more say in the commissioning of care and the design of services.
As I have said for many years, the key to the success of the NHS is to get GPs in leadership positions, locally, regionally and nationally. As GPs we have a good idea what patients need. I believe that with appropriate support we are capable of commissioning better services for our patients. This includes out-of-hours care. All of you will recall in our manifesto a call for:
“Better round-the-clock care for patients
Every patient deserves high-quality care in and out of hours. GPs must be more involved in local decision making and in the commissioning of out-of-hours services to deliver the highest-quality care around the clock.”
I look forward to working with the new health team in England, and continuing to work with the health teams in the other countries on other important aspects of our manifesto in the months and years to come.
Thanks as always for your support. I value your opinions and feedback enormously, and I urge you to get in touch if you have any comments or questions for me.
Thursday 6 May 2010
Election Day
Picture by: Ian Britton - FreeFoto.com
Election Day is finally here and whatever the outcome, it has been one of the most exciting build-ups I can remember. We will of course work with whichever party is in power in Westminster and whichever parties are in charge of health in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales.
My job as Chairman is a huge responsibility and while it’s not (quite) on the scale of leading a major political party, working with the parties has given me a lot more empathy with their leaders and I now understand that however hard you try, you can’t get it right all the time
A good example came last week when I represented the College at a joint conference with the King’s Fund and the Royal College of Physicians on the future of the NHS. It was a stimulating event, attracting a very influential audience, and I used the opportunity to talk at length about the role of the GP at the centre of the NHS, quality general practice, and the need for strong GP leadership and for a call for better integrated care across the specialties.
The general consensus was that whatever the outcome of the election, the NHS is stuffed financially for the next few years, but that GPs are best placed to lead the health service through the turbulent times ahead and that we can be relied upon to run cost-effective services without damaging the quality of patient care.
So you can imagine my dismay when I logged onto the website of GP newspaper and saw the story RCGP Chairman urges GPs to ‘grow up’ on pay. My presentation had been completely ignored in favour of one line on GP pay, which is not the business of the College in any case.
Clocking up the amount of media that I do, I’m usually laid back about the odd misquote here or there. I appreciate that journalists have their job to do and that positive stories about general practice don’t always create the best headlines - but this time I really saw red.
In their defence, the journalists at GP moved swiftly to print a clarification which is now online and will be printed as a letter in next week’s issue, but as far as I’m concerned the damage has been done and I can only apologise to any of you who have already read or will go on to read the story.
To set the record straight, I do think that GPs are now paid "appropriately" and so we should be, after years of being underpaid and underestimated for the work we do. I also believe that we should grow up, but by that I mean “grow into” the role of NHS leaders determining our own way ahead, rather than being passive receivers of what others are doing.
We have overwhelming evidence, most recently from the Commonwealth study and the American College of Physicians, that we have the best primary care system in the world, so why-oh-why is this always overshadowed by how much we are paid?
We can sit back and feel got at or we can choose to rise above it. It’s ironic that when the chips are down, the profession seems to come into its own and we just get on and do the best we possibly can for our patients while the voices of doom resonate around us.
Today has been a busy one so far and I spent this morning at the Department of Health talking about the need for GP leadership at all levels. By the end of today, we should have a new Government and whatever its complexion, we need to use this as an opportunity to show our mettle and demonstrate how GPs can steer the NHS through the choppy waters of the next few years, without our patients noticing any detrimental difference in the care they receive.
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