Helen Salisbury: Levelling down general practice

General practices in northwest London have been told by their integrated care board that they must work together to reorganise their services.1 This means that patients requesting same day appointments will be seen in an acute hub—staffed mostly by non-doctors—and that GPs will be “freed up” to concentrate on more complex cases. The plan has its roots in Claire Fuller’s 2022 report on integrating primary care,2 which is being elaborated on and put into action with help from the management consultancy KPMG.But it’s a spectacularly bad idea. It was roundly rejected by local medical committee leaders last November,3 and it throws continuity of care and the importance of the doctor-patient long term relationship to the wolves. A good doctor-patient relationship is built up over multiple encounters, some of which may initially seem trivial but all of which add up to a solid base, which can be built on when the…
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