‘Virtual super surgeries’ the future for primary care
pharmafile | July 8, 2005 | News story | |Â Â Â
Plans to redesign the primary care landscape with the creation of purpose-built super surgeries are in many cases unfeasible, according to the NHS Alliance.
Dr Michael Dixon, chairman of the alliance, representing clinicians and managers working in primary care, said there was neither the capital nor infrastructure to create super surgeries quickly enough and that other options were more viable.
Commenting on how the primary care landscape would look over the next few years, Dr Dixon said: "Will we see super surgeries? I don't think so. I think we'll have GPs coming together in a third place, which is not purpose-built. These will be virtual super surgeries. Practices working together in the community with much more diagnostic facilities and equipment for MIR scans and ultrasounds."
He believes that "virtual super surgeries" will operate from already established health service providers, like walk-in or treatment centres, or existing GP practices, and house networks of clinicians working together with different areas of specialisation.
"They will become part of the primary care fabric, with between 10 and 30 GPs working in these surgeries within communities of between 20,000 and 50,000.They will represent beacons for the community. I think the next few years they will become more prevalent in inner cities but less so in rural areas."
Dr Dixon expressed his views at the Alliance's PCTs: Fit for purpose conference and urged pharmaceutical companies to support these new primary care services, which he said offered a real opportunity to be involved in areas like diabetes treatment and diagnostics.
"Pharmaceutical companies have the option of taking over and running these super surgeries or looking to support them. I think it is not in the industry's interest to take over them. It could give pharma a bad image if it rushes in and tries to take over everything."
The introduction of practice based commissioning – which allows GPs to manage their own budgets – is likely to push more practices towards these networks, particularly as small practices will have to consider working together to achieve economies of scale in order to maximise their new budget powers.
But Dr Dixon said virtual super surgeries would not spell the end of the single-handed GP surgery, as GPs would retain their own identity while others continued to operate alone.
The Department of Health has welcomed the coming together of these networks, saying it is interested in innovative ways of bringing benefits to patients.
Related articles:
Competition to shake up NHS primary care services
Wednesday, June 01, 2005
