Further to my last post, I have been asked by Neil80 where I stand on the new proposals for the NHS structural changes. He points out that this may provide more opportunities for financially motivated doctors to milk the system.
PCTs already provide such opportunities. Also my main criticism of PCTs is that they take it upon themselves to dictate practice to the GPs, and even, indirectly also heavily influence the practice of hospital consultants. In my view they have acquired far too much power and for that reason I will not be sorry to see them go. The new commissioning bodies have the potential to be much more the servants of the GPs than the masters. I think it could work as long as this were realised, and, most importantly, the private sector should NOT be involved.
Any extra payments to doctors who involve themselves should be modest and proportionate.
Management types justify the grossly excessive pay of medical directors by claiming that such pay is necessary to attract the right people.
I would argue the opposite. Those sort of financial rewards, in my view, attract exactly the wrong sort of people.
It is in fact a clever two prong approach to privatise the whole NHS: Hospitals will be sold and Consultants TUPEed(if there is such a word)and as more private work encouraged for the rich oil nations, it becomes a different way of rationalisation. The second prong (presented as first prong) is to limit the money to GP commisioning. With increase income from private work, consultants are going to match GPs in income and not complain. All very sad.
ReplyDeleteThanks for answering that. I think it will be interesting to see what happens certainly it will entail the power balance shifting.
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