Dr Hamish Meldrum, Chairman of the General Practitioners Committee
Speech to ARM 2005
27 June 2005
First of all let me thank all those who have helped and supported me during this, my first year as chairman of the GPC. This really is a team effort and normally I would not single out any one individual but I do want to pay special thanks to our assistant secretary, Justin Cross, who is leaving to take up the position as Head of Division at Public Health. Justin has been an immensely valuable member of our team and our loss is public health’s very substantial gain. We wish him well.
I’m assuming you have all read my written report! Yes? Good, so in that case I’m not, in the short time available, intending to go into detail about the various implementation problems with the contract or its ongoing review.
I do just want to highlight one issue – the tremendous effort and success of the UK’s practices in the Quality and Outcomes Framework. These fantastic results demonstrate the high quality of UK general practice and I make no apology for the fact that many GPs are now enjoying a significant increase in earnings as a reward for such efforts.
However, this is not a time for gloating or making invidious comparisons with colleagues from other branches of the profession. We all benefit from good quality general practice and, more importantly, we are all at risk if the bedrock and the stability of general practice is threatened and it is to these matters that I now wish to turn.
Last week Patricia Hewitt launched her consultation process on the primary care White Paper – or out-of-hospital care as we must now apparently call it. Despite reassurances that she believes that GPs are and should remain, the cornerstone of the NHS, we hear worrying reports that there are those in government who seek to erode or even destroy the crucial underlying principles on which UK general practice is founded – holistic, list-based care, delivered by fully-trained generalists and their practice-based teams.
So we – you - must ensure that, when the Secretary of State addresses us tomorrow she is asked to reinforce her commitment to these principles and is not allowed to be beguiled by those strident voices who seek to destroy the ethos of general practice through some misplaced desire to appease the short-term, consumerist demands of the worried well at the expense of longer-term continuity of care for those who are really ill.
At the centre of this process is the trust and confidence that patients have in their GPs and crucial to that is the integrity and confidentiality of the patient record. Modern technology gives us the power to do many wonderful things. However, last week’s news showing just how easy it is to buy highly confidential bank account details demonstrates just how easy it is to abuse such power and threaten the whole trust on which our system of patient care is based.
Patients are at the heart of everything we do. When we debate these issues on Wednesday, let us ensure that we are united in doing what is best for them, because, fortunately, that is also likely to be best for us and the future of our profession.
Thank you.
