Doctor articles from March 2007

Doctor archives from March 2007

GPs vindicated on exception reporting use.
March 6, 2007... qof EXCEPTION reporting in England is lower than experts had predicted, according to the first statistics issued since the new contract. The overall effective exception reporting rate for England was 5.5% in 2005-6, the second year of the...

Guidance aims to end C&B slots confusion.(choose and book )
March 6, 2007... choose and book Will Beacham GPs should advise patients to book appointments directly via the Choose and Book (C&B) telephone appointments line if no slots are available, doctors' leaders say. Responding to guidance issued by the DoH, the...

Leave the heroics to lifeguards.(emergency care)(Brief article)
March 6, 2007... Emergency medicine It may be better to leave the heroic Good Samaritan stuff to the real-life Pamela Andersons, because lifeguards are better than many physicians at treating out-of-hospital trauma, according to a New York paediatrician....

Locums warned over need for feedback.
March 6, 2007... appraisal GP locums have been warned that failure of practices to give routine performance feedback endangers their ability to fulfil the appraisal requirements set out in the white paper. Practice administrative staff often give locum...

RCGP vows to fight policing by appraisal.(Royal College of General Practitioners)
March 6, 2007... White paper Will Beacham The RCGP will strive to keep any system for appraising doctors formative and confidential, it says, because if this changes the system will lose doctors' confidence. Last week's white paper contains proposals to...

Zero pay award 'insult' for GPs.
March 6, 2007... remuneration Will Beacham GPs last week suffered the indignity of a zero percent pay award, amounting to an effective pay cut when inflation and increased expenses are taken into account. The announcement by the Doctors and Dentists...

'Cuts in primary care will scupper reforms'.
March 6, 2007... policy A former senior adviser to the Department of Health has warned that NHS reforms are set to fail because they are sucking money out of primary care. Prof Chris Ham, who was director of strategy at the DoH between 2001 and...

'Financial rules led to NHS crisis'.
March 6, 2007... Accounting DoH economists are blaming an accounting change, and employing the wrong sort of staff, for the financial crisis in the NHS. In a report, they say the increased income of GPs and other health workers is not the cause of PCT...

Angry GPs aim to hit back over pay freeze.
March 13, 2007... pay protest Amena Saleem BOYCOTTING Choose and Book will be one of the options discussed by GP leaders this week in the face of the 0% pay award recommended for the profession. Other ways of protesting against what amounts to a pay cut, to...

British GPs tempted by job prospects overseas.
March 13, 2007... Employment The grass on the other side is looking distinctly greener for GPs, according to an online recruitment agency that reports record numbers of visits to webpages advertising jobs in New Zealand, Australia, North America and...

GPs face huge extra tax bills.
March 13, 2007... pension certificates GPs will be hit with extra tax bills for thousands of pounds next January unless they submit their cheques for superannuation shortfalls to PCTs before April, accountants warn. The alert follows a mix-up over NHS...

Hospital posts chaos may mean glut of GP hopefuls.
March 13, 2007... Training The application system for prospective GP registrars could become flooded with doctors swapping from the failing acute medicine scheme, doctors' leaders fear. Growing anger at inadequacies in the system, implemented this year...

Lack of information threatens PBC.
March 13, 2007... commissioning For practice-based commissioning (PBC) to work, GPs must have access to high-quality information about their local health economy, according to a group of GP experts. In a report published last week, the steering group set...

Lipid targets divide.
March 13, 2007... Targets A schism over lipid targets is developing between guideline groups, throwing general practice into confusion. According to a survey of 1,000 GPs released last week, two-thirds would prefer the QOF cholesterol target to come down...

Vaccine targets to go.
March 13, 2007... Immunisation Adam Legge Target payments for immunisation should be scrapped in favour of a graduated incentive scheme, says a DoH-commissioned review of flu vaccination in England. It recommends the department take over...

Walk-in centres 'don't ease access pressure'.
March 13, 2007... Services Amena Saleem NHS walk-in centres have not cut waiting times to see a GP and should not be used for that purpose, according to new research. Rather than offering an alternative to the care provided by GPs, they have the potential...

... but 78% of GPs want vote.
March 20, 2007... EXCLUSIVE DOCTOR SURVEY Nearly 80% of GPs believe they should be balloted on industrial action following the pay award, an exclusive Doctor survey of almost 750 GPs suggests. And 74.5% of them would support a boycott of Choose and Book...

Follow-up by GPs could slash costs.
March 20, 2007... DIABETES UK ANNUAL PROFESSIONAL CONFERENCE, GLASGOW, 14-16 march Providing follow-up for diabetes in primary rather than secondary care could slash the expenses of the average PCT by around [pounds sterling]900,000 per year, experts...

GPs refuse to be OOH scapegoat.
March 20, 2007... out-of-hours Derren Hayes Doctors' leaders and grass-roots GPs have warned that any attempts by ministers to extend GPs' working hours will fail if not properly funded. Struggling GP out-of-hours (OOH) services and overstretched hospital...

GPs warned of 'witch hunt' PCT inspections.
March 20, 2007... pms PMS GPs have been warned to prepare for tougher inspections amounting to 'witch hunts' from PCTs keen to wring 'value for money' from the contracts they agreed with GPs. Local medical committees have been reminding GPs to ensure...

LMCs fight 'GP scorecard'.(Local Medical Committee )
March 20, 2007... performance Mark Pownall LMCs are mounting strong resistance to threats by PCTs to publish league tables of GP quality and performance targets, effectively naming and shaming under-performing practices. Under the 'balanced...

No boycott, no ballot.
March 20, 2007... pay protest Amena Saleem THE GPC has voted against taking any national action on the 0% pay award. A motion to boycott Choose and Book was narrowly defeated, with a near 50/50 split between GPC members at a meeting last week. The decision...

'Don't let turf wars get in way of care'.
March 20, 2007... DIABETES UK ANNUAL PROFESSIONAL CONFERENCE, GLASGOW, 14-16 march Paola Accalai Physicians must not let patients become pawns in a rift between primary and secondary care over intermediate care services, a specialist GP warned delegates at...

'Mickey Mouse' access survey to cost [pounds sterling]11m.(Brief article)
March 20, 2007... Patient survey A freedom of Information request has revealed that a controversial patient survey is set to cost [pounds sterling]11m. The GPC withdrew co-operation from the survey after the DoH introduced what it viewed as biased...

DoH misjudgements to blame for deficits.(United Kingdom Department of Health)(Brief article)
March 27, 2007... funding POOR judgement by the DoH in negotiating pay for GPs and consultants and weak financial management by trusts is behind NHS deficits, according to the parlia-mentary spending watchdog. The Public Accounts Com-mittee said in a...

E-records consent protest.
March 27, 2007... Data spine GPs are using Read codes to indicate their concern about the use of the implied consent model for uploading patients' summary records to the national date spine. Doctors' leaders in Devon have advised GPs to use Read code 93C3...

Health checks for learning disabled to go in GP contract.
March 27, 2007... Contract THE DoH looks likely to push for the inclusion in the GP contract of regular health checks for people with learning disabilities. Responding to recommendations from the Disability Rights Commission (DRC), the DoH said last...

More GPs needed to deliver NHS reforms.
March 27, 2007... WORKFORCE planning Derren Hayes Plans to shift more care into the community will fail without a significant inc-rease in the primary care workforce, the influential Commons Health Select Committee has warned. In its report on NHS...

Rotavirus vaccination 'is not cost-effective'.
March 27, 2007... immunisation Immunising children against rotavirus would not be cost-effective at the current price of the vaccines, suggest researchers at the Health Protection Agency. A national programme using Rotateq - priced at [pounds...

Drive for defibrillators in every GP practice.
March 27, 2007... Emergencies Adam Legge EVERY GP practice should have a defibrillator, according to the British Heart Foundation (BHF), which last week published figures showing that half of all patients who arrest in a practice equipped with a device...

Enhanced services fight looms.
March 27, 2007... funding gps face a battle to secure enhanced services cash owing to a lack of a formal agreement on funding floors for 2007-08. The minimum payments are now stuck at the 2005-06 level, which is when a three-year deal negotiated under...

Private push begins.
March 27, 2007... alternative providers Derren Hayes The government has signalled its determination to increase the role of the private sector in running primary care services with the announcement that it will invite retailers to open GP surgeries...