Helen Salisbury: Everyone benefits from continuity of care

Triage, signposting, and care navigation are buzz words that crop up frequently in discussions about the future of general practice. They form part of NHS England’s vision of a leaner, cheaper service, in which simple health problems are attended to by someone with just enough skills and training for that task, leaving doctors free to concentrate on complicated cases that definitely need all that expensive training and professional expertise.The concept isn’t new. Years ago, as a GP registrar, for a few weeks I had to fill in a form after each consultation about whether the patient’s problem could have been managed by a nurse rather than a doctor. Even then I was aware that this wouldn’t produce useful answers. After all, judging in hindsight that the patient hadn’t really needed a doctor is very different from making that decision in advance on the basis of the presenting complaint. Before you’ve…
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