In a crowded Roysse Room representatives of the recently set up Oxfordshire GP Consortium were there to tell people about their planning for the future of the NHS in Oxfordshire if the Health and Social Care Bill gets finally passed. The knowledgable audience were generally sympathetic but had some reservations.
The Oxfordshire GP Consortium is currently shadowing and working with the Oxfordshire PCT (Primary Care Trust) and in the next two years could start to take over the leadership of how Health Services are ordered and paid for. That is £1,300 per annum for each one of us in Oxfordshire.
The Oxfordshire Consortium would do the big deals with the likes of the Radcliffe Trust who run the large hospitals and with the Oxford Health Trust for mental health and community health services.
There are also six local sub-consortium with some local flexibility. Those 6 are based on groups of GPs that already work together more than district council boundaries. Abingdon is now part of the South West Oxfordshire sub-consortium along with most of the Vale and South Oxfordshire.
People did not seem worried about GPs (Doctors) having more control over NHS budgets as they do have the knowledge and our trust. But people were worried about the effect of a large reorganisation of the NHS, and the private sector taking a greater role. It was said that a lot of functions and admin roles would just move over from PCT to Consortium – such as performance monitoring. But consortium are quite new and they are still exploring the best way to organise and the best way to include patient participation.
An interesting meeting.. it makes sense to me to involve the GP’s more, as quite rightly they have a better feel for the needs of the local area for which they serve. One of my concerns is that we will only end up with PCT by another name with more people in it?. I still hope the ‘nothing about me without me’ approach will be adhered to.
I have very few qualms about the private sector taking a larger role in treatment. We are not a rich family but we have used private healthcare providers in two different spheres in order to get better and faster treatment.
The waiting lists for minor-ish surgery (such as for serious ingrown toenails) is ridiculously long yet a private provider was able to arrange surgery within a week.
There is definitely room for improvement in many areas of the NHS Business and I can’t wait to see it happen.
I’m not convinced GPs are the right people to be handling the budgets in this proposed way. Did these people enter into their medical careers to spend a large proportion of their time and energy focussing on the bottom line, and managing a’business’ enterprise?
I’m also horrified at the amount of money that the JR hospital is having to pay back to a private (offshore, hence tax avoiding) company.