The Fortune Practice 6

After much deliberation Helen would take 24 hr retirement…

Alex was getting her head round her CCG role:

OK, so as well as doing her day job as a GP , the first thing she had to grips was as there was no management anymore and the CCG was responsible for the organisation of a service and the management of the services that she was referring her patients to.

Andrew was getting ready to go out, he was not quite there yet, perhaps some quality time with the love of his life would help?

No chance, after a full day of surgery , Alex had her head deeply buried in her lap top: approving her  consortium’s constitution , writing an agenda for her meeting, as well as the minutes of her last, emailing some contacts to get a patient involvement group going…supporting her colleagues involved in other more clinical areas..

Alex was getting her head around her new role: she was a bit startled  and recalled the Conservative Party Manifesto published in January 2010

“We want to free NHS staff from micromanagement, increase democratic accountability and give patients the power to choose the treatments that are best for them

We are stopping the top down reconfiguration of the NHS”

Surely what was happening now would have been a reasonable if the NHS hadn’t worked but in June 2010:

The Commenwealth fund reported that the NHS is second to netherlands only on the parameters of quality , efficiency , access to health care , equity and healthy living

Oh well..this is where we are, best do the best job , her reference point had to be the patients, not the profession…….

Now, the equally pressing decision of how to respond to the BMA poll about how to vote on striking over pensions….How selfish? But then after all…the cost of pensions and vocational training was one of the factors that had paved the way to the Act being passed and what ways of protest were there left from the profession?

Meanwhile Abi was happily watching the LMC decisions that perhaps one day , even in her own NHS practice…she could charge for her minor surgery efforts…things were looking very good for profit mongers in the NHS…