So, Dr Brown what do you think of the NHS reforms ....
Last week the government announced sweeping reforms to the NHS which will place GPs in the driving seat of commissioning care for our patients. Commissioning is the process whereby the NHS agrees with hospitals what services they are going to provide and how much they are going to pay for them.
Currently this is all done by Primary Care Trusts with very little involvement of the GPs. With the new reforms all GPs will be in consortium that will undertake this commissioning role. We are part of the Wakefield Alliance Consortium that has GP practices in Normanton, Wakefield, Castleford and Pontefract.
I believe that in order for the NHS to continue to improve and meet the challenges of increasing demand from an aging population and increasing cost pressure the NHS needs to become more efficient. Increasing cost pressures is because we are able to do more due to advances in medical technology and drugs - we need to do more for less. Currently I see lots of inefficiencies in the system but we have little way of changing the way the system work - I think that having more input into commissioning will help this.
One of our local challenges is dealing with increasing emergency admissions. We usually have about 30 - 35 patients in our local hospitals, every day. About half of these are patients on elderly care wards who are awaiting discharge. Usually they are waiting for social services to approve or arrange extra support when they are discharged. This seems to take a long time. The problem of making sure that we have beds in the new hospitals for patients we send will only be resolved if we can ensure that patients are able to quickly be discharged from hospital. This needs a system that works in partnership with local social services - but I am concerned that with cuts to local councils budgets this may be difficult to achieve.
Our patients want to go and be treated either close at home or in local hospitals They do not want to have to go miles to get treated in Barnsley or Sheffield. A criticisms of the reforms is that it will encourage independent providers and lead to a back door privatisation of the NHS that will result in the financial destabilisation of local NHS Trust. I think this is nonsense - our patients want to go to the new hospitals in Pinderfields and Pontefract and we would want to use our influence under commissioning to ensure that this happens. However, in order to make best use of NHS money we clearly need to do things differently - currently we host an independent physiotherapy service in the practice, carpal tunnel surgery and a vasectomy service. These are all services that cost less than at Mid Yorks and patients are seen quicker. We need more services like this so that we can send patients to Mid Yorks who can only be treated there.
We actually have a list of services that we would want the Consortia to invest in and top of this will be improving services for patients with mental health problems. Currently we have a number of separate and disjointed services for patients with mental health problems. These all need joining together so that patients get a seamless service rather than the ad-hoc service they seem to get at the moment.
So, in answer to the question we are keen to participate in the new reforms, we think we need to work smarter, more local and ensure that we become more efficient in spending NHS money.
Currently this is all done by Primary Care Trusts with very little involvement of the GPs. With the new reforms all GPs will be in consortium that will undertake this commissioning role. We are part of the Wakefield Alliance Consortium that has GP practices in Normanton, Wakefield, Castleford and Pontefract.
I believe that in order for the NHS to continue to improve and meet the challenges of increasing demand from an aging population and increasing cost pressure the NHS needs to become more efficient. Increasing cost pressures is because we are able to do more due to advances in medical technology and drugs - we need to do more for less. Currently I see lots of inefficiencies in the system but we have little way of changing the way the system work - I think that having more input into commissioning will help this.
One of our local challenges is dealing with increasing emergency admissions. We usually have about 30 - 35 patients in our local hospitals, every day. About half of these are patients on elderly care wards who are awaiting discharge. Usually they are waiting for social services to approve or arrange extra support when they are discharged. This seems to take a long time. The problem of making sure that we have beds in the new hospitals for patients we send will only be resolved if we can ensure that patients are able to quickly be discharged from hospital. This needs a system that works in partnership with local social services - but I am concerned that with cuts to local councils budgets this may be difficult to achieve.
Our patients want to go and be treated either close at home or in local hospitals They do not want to have to go miles to get treated in Barnsley or Sheffield. A criticisms of the reforms is that it will encourage independent providers and lead to a back door privatisation of the NHS that will result in the financial destabilisation of local NHS Trust. I think this is nonsense - our patients want to go to the new hospitals in Pinderfields and Pontefract and we would want to use our influence under commissioning to ensure that this happens. However, in order to make best use of NHS money we clearly need to do things differently - currently we host an independent physiotherapy service in the practice, carpal tunnel surgery and a vasectomy service. These are all services that cost less than at Mid Yorks and patients are seen quicker. We need more services like this so that we can send patients to Mid Yorks who can only be treated there.
We actually have a list of services that we would want the Consortia to invest in and top of this will be improving services for patients with mental health problems. Currently we have a number of separate and disjointed services for patients with mental health problems. These all need joining together so that patients get a seamless service rather than the ad-hoc service they seem to get at the moment.
So, in answer to the question we are keen to participate in the new reforms, we think we need to work smarter, more local and ensure that we become more efficient in spending NHS money.
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