These overworked and allegedly under paid GP's seem very reticent to publish how many patients they are now seeing face to face whilst our minimum wage stalwarts in supermarkets and shops made sure we were not eating rats and worms, even at the peak of the pandemic when little was known about the dangers. Our newly built state of the art surgery appears to have stopped face to face appointments altogether and the site now looks all but deserted. Sick patients have to find a means of getting ten miles away to a surgery in another town, even for something like a basic blood test. Even then my wife had to use her prodigious skills in being argumentative to insist on even an out of town face to face...
Apparently requests for comments by a local newspaper have gone unanswered.
From The Guardian :
GPs in England have voted in favour of taking limited forms of industrial action to protest against the government’s drive to force them to see patients face to face.
The results led the profession’s new leader to warn ministers that “demoralised, broken and exhausted” family doctors may refuse to undertake some normal duties to show their anger.
Four in five (80%) of the GPs who voted in an indicative ballot organised by the British Medical Association backed the withholding of information about how they hold appointments, as dispute over GP appointments deepens
Even more (84%) indicated their willingness to refuse to comply with the issuing of Covid-19 exemption certificates, which those who remain unvaccinated on medical grounds may need, for example, to work in a care home, where vaccination for staff is mandatory.
“The results of the indicative ballot show that the profession has had enough. Relationships are broken and trust has been lost,” said Dr Farah Jameel, the new chair of the BMA’s GP committee (GPC).
“Ultimately we don’t want to have to take action – we want to see action,” she added, in a plea to the health secretary, Sajid Javid, to do more to reduce GPs’ huge workloads.
A smaller majority (58%) said they would support their GP practice withdrawing from their local primary care network’s directed enhanced service, which could mean GPs scaling back visits to care homes, for example.
These lot need a kick where it really hurts, in their fat wallets.
