How to mend the NHS in five minutes

September 13, 2024 by Doctor Vernon Coleman MB ChB DSc

So, Keir `Free Suits’ Starmer, fresh from planning to kill some old people, has realised (because someone told him) that the National Health Service (the Western world’s only socialised system of medical care) is a disaster which kills more people than it saves.

And now he perhaps understands why Britain has the worst cancer care in the world. And why immigrants often go home if they are ill and need medical care.

So he’s going to organise an inquiry or a review or something of that ilk. And it will be the 999th reorganisation. And it will fail miserably.

Because there is only ONE thing that needs to be done to rescue the NHS.

And that is to make GPs work nights and weekends – as they used to do.

It is because most GPs now work part time (the average GP works 23-24 hours a week) that Accident and Emergency Departments take days to see patients, that the ambulance service can’t cope and that hospitals are clogged with patients who should be at home.

GPs work less now than ever in history.

The evidence shows that when I was a GP in the 1970s and 1980s, the average GP worked much longer hours and saw far more patients than today’s lazy GPs. There are more GPs per 100,000 patients today than there were then.

I don’t know what has happened to them but today’s young GPs need a kick up the backside.

If Starmer really wants to rescue the NHS then he should tell GPs to provide night and weekend cover and to do home visits – or to be fired.

GPs would give in because they have no real choice.

And he should make the British Medical Association (the patients’ enemy) a proscribed organisation.

That’s all it would take.

And the NHS could be reformed in five minutes.

Note
If you want to know more about the NHS please read my book `NHS: What’s wrong and how to put it right’. But if you want a fun `escapist’ read, describing what rural general practice was like in the 1970s when GPs were on call 24 hours a day, you will enjoy my `The Young Country Doctor’ series of books which begins with `The Young Country Doctor Book 1’, which is also known as `Bilbury Chronicles’ and which is available as a paperback, an eBook and an audio book.

Copyright Vernon Coleman September 2024