Moneo writes: A messy proposal

Last week I noted an article outlining plans put forward by Sajid Javid, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, to end the system whereby community GPs work under an NHS contract as independent contractors.

Javid describes this system as having ‘considerable drawbacks’. He has planned a review of primary care services to look at how better to integrate GPs with hospital care to improve services and health outcomes overall.

We again find the NHS at the mercy of a Secretary of State who doesn’t seem to have a clue as to how it works. We have someone in post who seems to think the NHS consists only of doctors, nurses and hospitals. Is he not aware that primary care is vastly wider than just GPs? Is he even aware that clinicians, such as optometrists, dentists and pharmacists, also operate under independent contractor status? Is it his intention to take away the right of independent contractor status from just one group of NHS contractors and leave the rest to carry on as before?