Row on GP commissioning role

Some speakers rallied against the role GPs are set to take after government reforms are passed. 

While others said health professionals need to work together, at the ‘Health policy and its impact on maternity care’ session this morning (16 November).

Greg Parston, chairman of the Public Management Foundation, said: ‘It’s going to be horrible and it’s not going to work.

‘There’s not a model in the world that replicates this and works.

‘All the evidence suggests that it won’t work and we are changing it and ripping it apart.

 ‘My argument is that we can still stop this,’ he said, discussing the proposed reforms.

While Dr Amit Bhargava, GP and chair of the Crawley Commissioning Consortium, told the audience that people need to pull together, rather than rally against change.

 He said there is a ‘politics of fear that everything will just fall down’.

‘It’s not as if we can say “no” and it’s just going to not happen – this is going to happen,’ he said.

Speaking about Greg’s comments he added: ‘We are on this train and we’ve got to make this journey work.

‘If we start from that point, then it’s just not going to work – we have to work together.’

While GP Dr Judy Shakespeare said that GPs aren’t all happy about the increased commissioning role.  

‘GPs see this, to some extent, as a poisoned chalice. We are going along with it because everyone wants to try and make it work, if they can,’ she said.