THE Chair of the BMA’s GP committee, Dr Laurence Buckman, told the Conference of Local Medical Committees yesterday: ‘A signal has been passed at danger – the NHS is under real threat.’
He said to repeated applause: ‘All of us but the politicians can see the buffers fast approaching. When is the driver going to pay any attention to any advice? Mr Hunt, start listening now.
‘As we have over the last 65 years, doctors, nurses and other NHS staff can work together to find a way through the current challenges and continue to provide more and better health care, free at the point of delivery, accessible to all.
‘But not if the government insists on denigrating us and using the NHS as a political weapon as it has increasingly been doing over recent months. Speeches, spin and sound-bites really aren’t going to achieve anything beyond a bit of political point-scoring.
‘The debacle over the huge pressures on A&E departments is a good case in point.
‘The government’s own analysis shows that the causes are complex and are due to how emergency activity is calculated, reductions in bed numbers, staff shortages in key hospital departments and the botched introduction of NHS 111, not a failure in out-of-hours primary care.
‘Yet, the headline response is to say it will all be ok if patients have named GPs.’
Speaking about the current pressures on the NHS, Dr Buckman said: ‘Despite all the evidence, Hunt continues to tweet that it is all the fault of the GP contract. This is because he does not want to bother with the facts when he can have a childish and simplistic bash at those of us who, on his own admission, were “overworked and strained beyond endurance”.
‘The fact is that GPs cannot become the providers of last resort for urgent out-of-hours services. We are undertaking more consultations per patient and we are diagnosing and treating more conditions than ever before.’
Buckman said that: ‘Hunt has continued to spout this rubbish when on Tuesday he told MPs that the contract has had a “devastating impact” and the pressures on A&E services were “direct consequences of the ‘disastrous changes’”.’
Buckman said he agreed with Mike Farrar of the NHS Confederation when he said: ‘We believe real and lasting improvements to out-of-hours care are possible, but only if we put a greater level of investment into primary, community and social care.’
Buckman continued: ‘GPs are not prepared to shore up a system that has been rendered unsafe by unwise political meddling.
‘We are happy to work closely with others, including CCGs where there is full GP input, to improve out-of-hours services.
‘We need to be freed from the oppression of box ticking and micromanagement. It’s time to reduce the huge, unnecessary GP workload so we have time to treat patients holistically, to treat patients as people not diseases, and offer the continuity of care that we and they want and need.
‘It’s time to give time to the patients who really need our care and attention, the vulnerable and the frail, and the patients who the NHS currently fails.’
