Hunt: GPs to care for elderly
pharmafile | September 12, 2013 | News story | Sales and Marketing | GP, Hunt, NHS, elderly
Health secretary Jeremy Hunt says that GPs are in line to become the named clinician responsible for elderly people’s care as they move between hospital, care home and their own home.
The move is designed to take pressure off A&E departments, which is where Hunt says “many vulnerable older people end up…simply because they cannot get the care and support they need anywhere else”.
The government’s proposals, due to be rolled out next year, should mean fewer repeat trips to A&E plus quicker diagnosis, treatment and discharge when patients do have to enter hospital.
A variety of strands of thought are present in the government’s thinking on this – not least the fact that much of the care traditionally provided in hospitals is increasingly to be provided in the home.
The population is ageing, and patients tend to have complex health needs combining treatment for a variety of conditions rather than just one or two: this means continuity of care – between different conditions and between home and hospital – is seen as hugely important.
The direction of travel – on which most parties are in broad agreement – is for greater cohesion between social care services.
Earlier this year the House of Commons health select committee warned of the need for the NHS to be ‘re-imagined’ after publishing a report on public expenditure on health and care services.
The ability for all doctors and carers to access patient records and accurate clinical information – the so-called paperless NHS, which the government hopes will be a reality by 2018 – is also vital in order for the whole process to work.
The NHS Alliance is broadly supportive of Hunt’s plans for GPs but warns it means “we will need to reinvigorate primary care”.
“There will have to be greater resource in general practice, with, as Mr Hunt has acknowledged, at least 50% of doctors becoming GPs, and we will need to prioritise what’s important, ensuring that we stop doing the unnecessary tasks such as QOF ‘tick-boxing’, and instead really focus on whole person care,” the group says in a statement.
The Royal College of GPs has already said it will need more resources to undertake more work, while NHS Alliance GMS/PMS contract lead Dr David Jenner told GP that it all meant doctors would need to take control of social care staff and budgets.
“I don’t see that happening,” he told GP. “What general practice needs to take on this extra responsibility is a period of stable funding.”
Other voices are more hostile: the BMA’s GPC negotiator Dr Dean Marshall told GP that Hunt’s proposals are “based on a 1950s view of general practice”.
A consultation on the government’s proposals is open until 27 September.
Meanwhile the Future Hospital Commission, established by the Royal College of Physicians of London to find solutions to NHS challenges in England and Wales, recommends that hospitals should ‘radically restructure’, allowing doctors from different specialties going to treat acutely-ill patients rather than moving them between wards.
Adam Hill
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