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| CASE NOTES
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| | | Dr Graham Easton gives listeners the low-down on what the medical profession does and doesn't know. Each week an expert in the studio tackles a particular topic and there are reports from around the UK on the health of the nation - and the NHS.
radioscience@bbc.co.uk | | | | | LISTEN AGAIN 30 min | | | |
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"What I love about Case Notes is that it's about real medicine - real patients and health professionals telling it how it is. These days staying healthy is as much about knowing how to get the most out of the health service as about knowing all the ins and outs of disease."
Graham Easton |
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| PROGRAMME DETAILS | | | |
|  | | Photo by M.Spinks for Doctor Magazine.
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GP Single Handers
Are single-handed GPs a dying breed? Some solo GPs (and many of their patients) are worried following a remark from Tony Blair which questioned the quality of care they provide. In a statement to the House of Commons, the Prime Minister said:
“There has been a move over time away from single-handed practices so as to improve the quality of care that people receive. That has been based on a great deal of evidence over a long time.” (Hansard 3 July 2002 Column 219)
In Case Notes this week presenter Dr Graham Easton examines where the Prime Minister’s evidence comes from, and whether the doctors really have got anything to worry about. Graham spends the day with a single-handed GP in Birmingham to find out for himself what kind of service patients can expect, and talks to Dr Mike Taylor, chairman of the Small Practices Association, which has thrown its full weight behind a campaign to “Save our Single-Handers (SOS)” run by the medical magazine “Doctor”. Graham hears what patients of single-handed doctors think about all this, and asks David Hinchcliffe, Chair of the Commons Health Committee, where he thinks the government really stands on the issue.
Many of the 2800 single-handed GP’s in England (about 10% of the total) are furious at the Prime Minister’s comments. They point out that while there’s little evidence to support the PM’s statement that single-handers provide poor care, there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that patients prefer the personal care and accessibility of solo GPs to the increasingly large group practices favoured by the modern NHS. The SOS campaign is calling for Tony Blair to retract his statements, and to engage in a proper debate on the quality of single-handed doctors. It also wants Health Secretary Alan Milburn to make an unequivocal statement of Government policy in support of single-handers, as well as a law change around declaration of vacancies which may discriminate against them.
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RELATED LINKS
Doctor Magazine
Patients Association
BMA
Department of Health
The Patient's Forum
Net Doctor
NHS Direct
BBC Health News
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BBC Webguide - Health
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