Image: Dr Bob Gill. National Health Action Party
The NHS needs ‘fundamental changes’ to save it from ‘disaster’, the Kings Fund told us last week (as they seem to most weeks). New NHS plans mean GPs ‘will deliver more integrated services in the community’, they tell us. GPs already have lots of ‘autonomy’ and can embrace ‘disruptive innovation’, be more ‘flexible’ over payments, take on new ‘leadership’ roles, and ‘collaborate’ better with a wider range of ‘providers’, including (it is left implicit) private healthcare corporations.
The Kings Fund seems to be living in a parallel universe. As a GP, I see my colleagues having lost autonomy, morale and now income to such an extent that they are leaving in droves - clearing the way for the private sector. And what’s caused this fundamental disaster now rapidly unfolding in General Practice? The pro-private sector policies pursued by politicians for decades. Policies that the once highly respectable Kings Fund now promotes as effectively - if more circumspectly - as more obviously right-wing ‘think tanks’ like the Adam Smith Institute have done for years.
