Kings Medical Practice News www.kingmedicalpractice.co.uk

Mrs Atkinson worked for the practice for nearly 55 years. She joined Dr Twist in 1938 as a dispenser and worked until 1993 when she retired at the age of 73. She died last week after a short illness in Pontefract General Infirmary at the age of 90. Her funeral at Pontefract Crematorium was well attended by her family, friends and members of staff who worked with Mrs Atkinson. Mrs Atkinson will be remembered by lots of our patients - she was always very clear about how patients should behave, and for that matter about what their doctors should do as well! I worked with Mrs Atkinson for nine years after I joined the practice in 2004 and found her quite intimidating to start with. But she was always very loyal to the practice and had clear ideas about how to treat patients. I am sure that I can categorically say that no-one will ever match her service to our patients in Normanton.

I was at a meeting two weeks ago where our Practice Based Commissioning Consortia had invited Julia Squires, the Chief Executive of Mid Yorks Hospital Trusts to discuss various things. One of the things that cropped up was the extra cost of the new Pinderfields and Pontefract hospitals and how the local health community is going to pay for it. I am not sure whether what was discussed was confidential or not so have not blogged about it until now, but in Fridays Wakefield Express there were full details about their financial difficulties - so I think I can now comment. To read the Wakefield Express story click here . The Mid Yorks Trust has a budget of about £400 million per year, the new hospitals in Wakefield and Pinderfields will cost an extra £30 million per year and inorder to fund this the Trust has to make savings. The Trust has planned to make nearly £50 million of savings over the next two years. This year Mid Yorks Trust have asked Wakefield PCT for an extra £12 million - £8 m

In a major reorganisation of the NHS announced yesterday by the Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley, GPs are to be given a hugely increased role in commissioning. Commissioning healthcare is about deciding what services the NHS will pay for e.g. hospital services, mental health services, community services. In these far reaching proposals two layers of bureaucracy will axed – Strategic Health Authorities and Primary Care Trusts. Their commissioning responsibilities will be handed to GP consortia that typically might look after 100,000ish patients. We have of course been here before, firstly with fundholding, that New Labour ended in 1997, but was more limited – did not cover the range of services that these new proposals will and was only taken up by about 50% of GPs – whereas this initiative will apply to all GPs in England. The initiative that it has been built on is Practice Based Commissioning. This has been in existence for about seven years. Kings Medical Practice is in a consortia

I blogged last month about Script Switch. This is a prescribing tool that helps GPs make more cost effective prescribing choices. I was at a Wakefield PCT Medicines Management meeting when we were updated about Script Switch. Since March, Script Switch has been in use in all practices across Wakefield and Pontefract. By accepting the choices suggested by Script Switch GPs have already saved £62,109 from prescribing budgets and Medicines Management Service has projected a 12 month saving of at least £337,652 across the whole of Wakefield. Suggestions made by Script Switch about prescriptions for acute conditions have been accepted by GPs on 50% of occasions, those for repeat prescriptions about 30% of the time. Not bad eh!