This BBC News article reporting on the BMA’s recent report on “Safe working in general practice” shows how complex it is when we think the only thing a GP can do is provide timed office visit appointments to their Patients:

mHealth Insights

As a rule of thumb I find that if in General Practice you need to resort to using buzzword terms to get a point across (eg. “controlling GP workload through a locality hub model“) the concept you’re promoting is probably too complicated or you don’t yet actually understand what you’re trying to do. If you struggle with this Dr Wendy Sue Swanson’s TedX talk about using the tools of our time should be of help because very often the tools that we need to use with Patients don’t need to be bought in multi-year multi-£billion tenders because they’re already in our pockets.

It should be obvious that attempts to measure the work of a GP by how long they spend with a Patient is a losing battle when you realise there are NHS GPs writing in national newspapers that they spend much of their day consulting with Patients who they think are wasting their time.

The NHS makes no sense if you think the product GPs make is office appointments so wouldn’t it be better if the BMA stopped calling for more of the same and backed efforts by NHS GPs who have moved beyond the office visit model?

Making champions of smart GPs like Dr Rupert Bankart who are sharing evidence on new models that work for GPs and are popular with Patients would be a great start.

Related Post: Does John need your Time or Attention?

Do Patients need the TIME or Attention of their GP? https://t.co/rfPj8pBnz1

— mHealth Insight (@mHealthInsight) August 29, 2016