Doesn’t Dr Hamish Meldrum, the head of the BMA have a share in one of those new polyclinics?
And I have some younger doctor friends who actually would never consider joining this organisation because they believe it only caters for the interests of senior GPs and nothing else! Indeed, that seems to be the case since loads of newly qualified GPs can not find decent full time work while the big GP sharks refuse to allow them partnerships in their lucrative businesses!
Suffice to say that general practice is the only private business perhaps in the world with guaranteed large income regardless of viability and the quality of care, or lack thereof, they provide – they even get their premises refurbished for them through the public purse! After all this, a large percentage of them are but clerks sitting on those desks referring their patients to costly hospitals instead of doing what they should do according to their contractual agreements with the NHS; ‘treating’ patients! This is why the NHS is in financial trouble now. It is high time the BMA addressed this negligence amongst those it defends before it embarks on a second scare campaign that only harms the very patients it claims to be protecting – and roll on the polyclinics, the most sensible idea for years! Long overdue too!
Dear Magda,
As a GP I felt compelled to reply to your posting.
Firstly I am member of the BMA and also sit on UK Council and the GP committee. I can assure you the BMA represents EVERY type of doctor in the UK. I agree the GP section is strong but so is the consultants and junior doctor section. They are just as vocal on many issues.
As a GP I am self employed – I accept that. The BMA campaign seeks to halt large private companies hiving off profits to their shareholders on wasteful contracts such as the badly negotiated ISTC contracts.
My practice has been in place for over a 100 years. We derive a large part of practice income from patient surveys and quality, evidenced based care (QOF). If we provided a bad service and bad care then the practice would not be viable. We would lose a LOT of income.
As we provide premises for NHS patients then the NHS does provide some income to keep them fit for purpose – it isn’t much though I can assure you.
You say I sit at a table like a ‘clerk’ and don’t treat patients. I actually find that quite insulting and the 60 patients I ‘treated’ yesterday would I am sure say that I dealt with their illness and ‘treated them’.
You also say we are ‘negligent’ – in what way?
By the way the GP polyclinics which have been imposed on every PCT have struggled to attract patients away from well established practices and the contracts signed will need paying year in year out despite the number of patients a practice attracts – surely not a good use of NHS monies.
I look forward to hearing back from you,
David
I have worked as a GP for 12 years and have represented Wiltshire and Dorset GPs for six. On many occassions I have been approached for help by my medical collegaues regarding employment issues and with the local medical committee have campaigned for the resources for us to treat our patients in the community. The BMA works for all doctors, young and old, in training, staff and associate doctors, consultants, locums, salaried, retainer GPs and partners. It is very difficult to take poor practice to an industrial tribunal or defne yourself when you need it, if you are not advised by an expert in employment practice, and union membership provides this like insurance cover.
In my own community we had a new walk in centre installed amidst eight existing GP practices leaving local GPs with no choice but to comply or see the whole centre’s profits removed from the local health economy and lose control over these resources as NHS money is removed to private investors bank accounts; naturally, in business the aim is to make a profit, and my concern is that patient care would come second to profits. I understand that in Dr Meldrum’s area those GPs had the same problem, and they were able to reduce the thrust for profit making at the expense of patient care by introducing a not-for-profit company.
We are all attempting to provide the best care to our patients within the system that we must work. In the last year we have taken on a new partenr, the year before that we offered our retained GP the choice of partnership or a salaried post and we had a second new partner. It is grossly misleading to attack all existing partners as big GP sharks. Younger GPs may choose to take on salaried jobs as the BMA negotiated contract gives them excellent study leave, sickness and maternity, paternity and adoption leave, far better income and security if you are at the time of life when you are having children or are unfortunate to become unwell.
I am an appraiser of all types of GP, and the GP partnership vacancies are not overwhelmed with applicants. What we all need is to be in a union for when we are subjected to poor employment practice or our jobs are threatened, it is very difficult to negotaite a fair contract as a new consultant as an individual, it is nearly impossible to represent yourself at an industrial tribunal if you are on the receiving end of poor practice, but as a BMA member the excellent industrial relations officers would be there for you, locally.
The BMA does not defend negligence, as well as our trade union role we are a professional body for all types of doctors from the day individuals enter medical school as a glance at our website and many activities on behalf of our members would show.
When I started work I regularly worked 120 plus hours, what was safe about that? I needed the BMA to help change that and I need the BMA now to help me to treat my patients to the best of our NHS funding. I need the BMA to ensure that the NHS fuding for all our futures is there to provide care and not squandered on the scandal that is PFI, and the strangleghold that paying off big business before providng care will be for the next 25-30 yeasr.
Dr Meldrum, like many other GPs who do not approve of government policy, was forced with colleagues to bid to run a GP led health centre in order to stop a private company running this. A GP on the KONP steering group said it took them 9 months of extra work and £30,000 to bid for the GP led health centre which they only did to prevent patients begin ripped off by private or corporate providers like United Health. W