"1 with the aim to relieve GP’s and 2 to try to improve the quality of living for the cohort of people they are targeting." See that's interesting, the order that's been put in.
"GP’s need the time to invest in their local services from a business point of view - their premises, their recruitment, increasing list sizes, CCG and public health demands (yes demands), statistics and processes they are obliged to provide." But they chose, the WANTED to operate as self employed contractors to the nhs.
"Your local surgery is dependent upon it’s surrounding infrastructure. If you have a terribly performing local acute hospital, a huge elderly population who cannot access any help from social care, high levels of poverty, massive cuts to mental health services - where do you think these patients go? They go to their GP" well they try - if they can get an appointment.
"The salary isn't as high as you think if you have a family to support. If both parents are working the childcare costs for more than 1DC don't make it worth it to work FT during the preschool years" sorry I'm really not buying this one, childcare is no more expensive for GP's than it is for care assistants on nmw. But they're on a much larger salary.
"DH outearns me by a huge margin so my income is always going to be the one considered against the cost of childcare" been on mn long? The usual response to a comment like this (rightly so) is that childcare is BOTH your responsibility and that keeping your hand in career wise is worth the short term lower disposable income.
And sorry but I think tax deductions for higher cost childcare for those doing reasonably well when we have working families needing to use foodbanks, full time workers sleeping on the streets! Is not the priority.
PinkieDo as has been repeatedly said, people do want to use other routes to primary healthcare - some GPs/surgeries are preventing this.
No the health of the country isn't entirely down to GP's but they're the first port of call to the healthcare system and as such should be run effectively and efficiently and currently they're not.
"but also hope that Brexit does mean that money will be injected into the RIGHT areas of the NHS." 😂😂😂 do you seriously think this isn't happening because we're in the EU? Brexit is going to make things so much worse.
Agree with weetabix that 111, out of hours have cost more without actually providing decent services. 9/10 111 will send you to hospital - possibly even calling out an ambulance - for the most minor reasons. It's not fit for purpose. Out of hours are staffed by hcps being paid extra yet unable to deal with patients properly as they don't know them, usually don't have access to records & increasingly because they're not Drs - instead sometimes paramedics - who are great at what they're trained for which is a&e stuff, not so much chronic conditions and complex patient histories & Med regimes.
"I am closely involved in this aspect of GP practice and I can find a lot of nurses but very few GP’s. So it may be more worthwhile investing in nurse training." That makes sense to me, as long as the nurses weren't taken advantage of. Would free up GP appointments, patients get the healthcare needed, but can I suggest nurse practitioners also be able to make specialist referrals? It seems nonsensical to make patients make a GP appointment when they and the nurse can perfectly well work out that a referral is needed.
"MPs and policy makers and drs unions etc are the ones that should be fighting for that. It isn't fair to ask patients to fight on behalf of their GPs." Completely agree.