I’ve been a bit quiet for the past couple of weeks, but I’ve been ruminating on an email I received from a local MP.
Essentially, this particular MP had written ‘off the cuff’ to my secretary as one of his constituents to extol the virtues of our Prime Minister and his pledge to offer GPs available to the nation seven days a week. I thought it only polite to add my ‘two-penneth’ to his comments and duly fired off a reply. I’m sure you can imagine the sorts of things I said – and I’ve said as much on this ‘ere blog.
My gripe was that the Prime Minister’s promise was really not worth the paper it was written on – we already have 7 day access to GPs and I expressed my concern that he wasn’t aware of all the Walk In Centres we have around the country (never mind county!!). I had also calculated that the £400m pledge for the NHS over the next 5 years worked out at roughly £22 per day (when you divide it by the number of surgeries in the country) – and I don’t know about you, but I couldn’t run a decent service for £22 a day!! That wouldn’t cover my receptionist, never mind the GP, the nurse, the heating/lighting etc. And of course, I had to add that if we were to open 7 days a week, could we expect pathology and radiology to run a similar routine service, oh and a courier to collect the samples on Saturday and Sunday as they do now Monday to Friday.
I wouldn’t say I held my breath for a response, but I did get one, 18 days after I sent my original email. As an MP whose constituency covered the city, he was as he admitted “out of date with the situation in rural surgeries”………..not that this had anything to do with the comments I had raised! The situation for rural, suburban and city practices will I’m sure, be the same………too much demand, not enough GPs, not enough hours in the day, too many *@&%ing boxes to tick………….
Anyhoo……he went on to say that “Politicians have to express complex plans simply, much to the frustration of experts, who don’t have the same electoral challenges……..”
err…….pardon?? And he also said that he was often told we don’t have enough GPs because they don’t get paid enough…..”but if that were true we would have few MPs too”
What on earth has that last little snippet got to do with any of the arguments we’re throwing back at the Prime Minister????? He continued to tell me that he was paid more in a previous life for doing a different job with less hassle……….I wondered if he thought I should care about that, because obviously I don’t!!!!!
He droned on to say that he appreciated professionals’ frustrations but I mustn’t assume that a politician doesn’t know what’s happening out there, because they do talk to their constituents………….but the bloody point of MY email was to say actually mate, MPs DON’T come out and talk to us Practice Managers, or GPs for that matter – they are making decisions about our Practices without speaking to us first. And whilst I know that the BMA are heavily involved in the decision making process, I would bet my last pound that Messrs Hunt and Cameron are sitting in chambers thinking of all the little wheezes they should throw at us, ‘for the good of the nation’………
It will come as no surprise to you dear reader, that he ignored most of the questions I raised – the issue of extended services to meet extended GP access, issues surrounding medical records being kept up to date if patients wander between practices as they use GP availability as the deciding factor of where to book their appointment and also issues I raised about the recruitment crisis in Primary Care and GPs who are retiring early.
He ended his email to me with the statement that “the NHS is safe with us and not with them……..” And Mr MP, you can be sure I’ll keep this, because I now have that in writing……but I hazard a guess that you might either be telling porkies, or you’re throwing me a line to try and keep me quiet………HA! He has NO hope of that!!!!!!!
