Therese Coffey’s much vaunted new plan for the NHS, ridiculously titled Our Plan For Patients is neither new nor a plan. It lacks both of the elements that are needed to make its limited promises a reality: extra funding and a plan to secure sufficient workforce.
The main selling point to grab headlines was declaring an “expectation” that a patient who needs an appointment with a GP within two weeks should be able to get one. But this is a feeble and belated echo of the guarantee made in 2000 by New Labour’s NHS Plan that all patients would be able to see a GP within 48 hours by 2004, and indicates how far the NHS has declined since George Osborne slammed the brakes on spending back in 2010.
In fact, Coffey is proposing that 3 million people seeking to see a GP (about 1 percent of the total demand for appointments) should instead be offered appointments with pharmacists, physiotherapists and other health professionals, who may or may not be seen as able to answer the problems that are raised.
The vague and evasive wording circles round the fact that Coffey cannot compel GPs to cap waiting times at two weeks: that would require renegotiation of the GP contract the Department of Health and Social Care agrees every year with the British Medical Association. It would mean talking to people: this government does not do that.
Full article in The Lowdown, 26 September 2022