There have been many calls for better access to GPs, but no clamour at all from patients to be able to get an appointment with a Physician Associate: yet that may be all that is on offer to 2.4 million patients in nine North West London boroughs if plans to reshape primary care services are carried through.
Arguments over the proper role in primary care of Physician Associates (PAs) – who have passed a limited 2-year postgraduate course rather than the much more lengthy process for training doctors – have continued and widened since the angry rejection of plans by NW London Integrated Care Board (ICB) to put PAs or other non-doctors, and not GPs, into the front line of response to urgent ‘same day’ calls in primary care.
The partial, temporary retreat and half-hearted apology by the ICB, which followed quickly after leaked details of the scheme first came to public view last month, has not brought an end to the stand-off in NW London.
Full story in The Lowdown, 25 March 2024