Everyone to have a 'Named GP' - who is he kidding?

Quite rightly Jeremy Hunt bemoans the fact that most people cannot name the doctor they last saw at their local practice, and do not feel that they have a lasting relationship with any GP. So he has insisted that patients should be allocated a particular named GP.

But all the things he and colleagues have done in recent years has actually caused the problem,  and this latest sop to daily mail readers will do nothing to reverse the sad trend he and his mates have caused.

 Is it really the Government’s fault? Yes it is, and the reasons are as follows:

First and foremost the NHS has made life much more difficult for small practices over the last 10 years.  The admin burden of keeping up with ever changing rules and initiatives is huge and needs efficient management and economies of scale. Achieving so called Quality targets demands nursing and admin and IT skills which is hard for small practices. Satisfying the demands of the CQC, (Health Inspector), by providing a long list of practice policies and records of staff training is also much more difficult for small practices.

Despite small practices consistently outperforming in patient satisfaction surveys. Single handed doctors have been effectively hounded out, so that there are hardly any left, while large 10+ doctor practices, often part of large multi practice businesses, have mushroomed. In practices of this size ensuring that patients see the same doctor is very hard, and doctors are very unlikely to know their patients and their families. Continuity of care is almost impossible, and doctors are tempted just to move the problem on temporarily, rather than take the time needed to really sort things out. This is bad for the quality of care that patients receive, and almost certainly increases costs of drug prescribing and specialist referrals.

Formerly, most GPs would have a sense of ownership with regard to a practice whether or not they were in fact owners. That is now increasingly rare, with many GPs simply turning up, seeing patients, doing the minimum necessary paperwork, and leaving at the end of the day without any involvement in practice organisation.

So Mr Hunt is right to be concerned, but his concern comes very late in the day. if he is serious he needs to undo a lot of the changes that have happened in the last 10 years, which he shows no sign of doing at all so far. The named GP initiative is a meaningless farce which will do nothing to restore what we have lost.