I totally agree with Robbie he is very committed to patient care and has the foresight to see the oncoming problems. In our neck of the woods there has been a dramatic off loading of OOH care. 5 years ago when I went for an evening meeting with the local medical society there were 15 GP's on call for a mid shire market town covering a population of 300,000.
Now there are nil and the DDS covers from Birmingham with one Doctor covering a population of 800,000. They call it progress.
Our A&E dept. picked up the slack and it will only get worse what with NHS Direct telling more people to come to A&E.
BTW about breaches, with 4 hour A&E targets being an important parameter in the way that NHS Trusts acheive their star rating more senior staff will be called out at night. NHS managers are becoming more twitchy about losing star ratings as their jobs and futures depend on the ranking system and they will then start to lash out at medical staff and make them more accountable. Interesting times ahead and like Robbie I think the system will struggle.
Best wishes
Danny McGeehan
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