Nick Bostock reports at GPonline that:

Under-pressure GPs are delivering ‘remarkable outcomes’ on cancer

You can read the complete article here. Nick reports:

GPs ‘can take a lot of credit’ for marked improvements in early cancer diagnosis and reductions in the proportion of cases detected as an emergency, according to a cancer expert.

In the year to March 2018, the proportion of cancer patients who first presented at hospital as an emergency fell to 18.8% – down from 21% in the year to December 2012.

Over roughly the same period, cancers detected at an early stage increased significantly – rising from 46% in 2013 to 52% by mid-2017, according to figures from the National Cancer Intelligence Network (NCIN).

However: GPonline reported earlier this year on research showing that GPs were as good as consultants at making appropriate use of cancer diagnostic tests – and yet pledges to give GPs direct access to four key diagnostic tests – blood tests, chest X-ray, ultrasound and endoscopy – have not been delivered in many areas.

Isn’t it about time that GPs were also given access to the new technology for GP consultations via mobile and Skype? This is currently being ‘rolled out’ by GP at Hand. Here’s a transcript of the R4 Today programme 13 September at 6 mins to 9:00 am (I made this transcript and I believe it’s a fairly accurate job – but any mistakes are mine):

(Int) Interviewer

AP (Ali Parsa, CEO Babylon – parent company that runs GP at Hand)

RV (Dr Richard Vautrey, Chair GP Committee, British Medical Association)

SoS = Secretary of State

 

(Int): So Ali Parsa just explain to us how your App works.

(AP): So, we have a very simple service. So, what it does is allow patients to check their symptoms whenever they want. To make an appointment with a doctor within seconds, to be able to see a doctor within minutes. In fact, I was just checking my App and it says that if I want to see a doctor I can see one at 9 o’clock today, in the next few minutes.

(Int): You mean ‘see’ over the phone?

(AP): Over the phone. And if you want to see somebody physically then, you can go see them that very same day. It is open 24hrs a day, 365 days of the year. And it is available for the same price the National Health Service pays any other GP. What we have done is to solve the problem of accessibility and the continuity of healthcare – using technology and what the SoS and the NHS is doing today is celebrating that and promising it for the whole country.

(Int): And Richard Vautrey, this is something which patients complain about again and again, isn’t it, access to their GP, so is this kind of App the solution?

(RV): We have real concerns, as well as patients do, about the inability of many practices to be able to offer enough appointments and that’s simply because we haven’t had the funding over the last decade to support the expansion of the health service to be able to meet the growing needs of our patients. What General Practices are doing right now is seeing thousands and thousands – if not a million – patients today offering, you know, face-to-face consultations and seeing them in their surgeries, so that’s when patients approach them today. So that’s happening right now. What we haven’t got is the resources to be able to offer some of the IT technologies in every single practice. And the SoS’s commitment to IT is welcome, but we need to see that commitment translated into resources provided to enable every practice to offer this type of consultation.

(Int): But could this kind of technological approach actually help some of the pressure on GPs because people would consult a doctor over the phone rather than going to the surgery.

(AP): Well many practices, if not most practices, already offer telephone consultations. What they haven’t got is the IT kit to be able to offer smart phone consultations, or Skype-phone computer consultations, any many would like to be able to do that, if the technology was provided to them. But the other big difference is that every Practice that is open today will see any and every patient who lives within their area, and we have concerns about the model of which GP Hand has been built, which is primarily about looking at some of the relatively mobile healthy patients and not accepting every single patient who lives within their area.

(AP): I’m afraid Richard that is simply factually not true. We will ask when patients started the service, to ask patients to seek advice if they want to change their GP Practice to our Practice, if they have any clinical issues. Most patients seek advice and join us – we look after them, young, old, sick, healthy, our patients are across the border, and we don’t do that just in Britain, remember we look after one third of the population in Rwanda, and we do so in the United States, we do this in Canada. . .

(Int): But specifically, on this idea of whether you cherry pick patients, it’s likely that patients who don’t have very serious health problems, and maybe younger, are more likely to want to use an App on their mobile.

(AP) . . . but, why is that? If the patient is not very mobile, if the patient is very old, if the patient can’t wait a few weeks to see their GP, they’re significantly more likely to use a service that is continuously available. Many of our patients have mental health issues – they can’t wait for a few days or a few weeks to see their GP. That’s why they switch to us. A thousand patients today will choose to apply to GP at Hand, and then switch their GP Practice – one every three minutes.

(Int): Richard Vautrey, some GP Practices are worried about the fact that if their patients sign up to GP at Hand they then lose that funding, don’t they?

(RV): That’s exactly right. And the way that General Practice is funded at the moment is a balanced mechanism, so those patients who use the service less, and there are many patients that use the service more, and that overall, that compensates one for another. What we have concerns about is that this would effectively replace a personal service with an anonymous call centre and patients don’t want that.

(Int): And finally, Ali Parsa, this was something that commissioning groups in Birmingham were worried about and that was clinical safety – isn’t it better to see a doctor the next day.

(AP): No, it wasn’t clinical safety, you do see a doctor, not a call centre, face-to-face on your mobile and then see one in one of our surgeries. We will open up across the country physical surgeries, their issue was not that. It was an IT hitch that doesn’t allow its screening to be done with your local hospital and that IT hitch has been fixed. This is the future, and I encourage more and more patients to join it.

(Int): Okay thank you both, we’ll leave it there, let us know what your think via twitter.