PBC Postcard - Dinah Roy

Dr Dinah Roy is chair of Sedgefield PBC Group. She gives a quick run through her experiences, and how things are going in her area.

• I became chair of our PBC consortium because nobody else wanted to.

• If I wasn't chair I would have much more time to make nutritious and filling gourmet meals and drink gin.

• I spend 16-20 hours a week on PBC business; I am paid for 12 of them.

• We chose our consortium's name, Sedgefield PBC Group, to carry the torch for a community of GPs who've worked together for many years.

• Astonishingly game, considering the frustrations, are the words that best sum up local GPs' attitude to PBC.

• Enthusiastic but confused describes our PCT's attitude towards PBC.

• Getting a primary care DVT service up and running is our greatest achievement as a consortium.

• Negotiating payments on last year's incentive scheme is my greatest achievement as consortium chair. All the time I've wasted reading long boring documents when I could have been at the hairdresser is my biggest regret.

• The most frustrating thing about PBC is slow progress because of underdeveloped support and bureaucracy.

• The biggest threat to PBC's success is that it's misunderstood and marginalised, especially its relationship with ‘practice-based provision'.

• I am optimistic that PBC will lead to much better services for patients, particularly improved and extended primary care.

• If we had real budgets – preferably in the form of used fivers – PBC would be transformed overnight.

• The worst piece of PBC jargon I have come across is ‘fair shares budgets' – an impossible dream.

• Compared to fundholding, PBC is potentially earth-shattering.

• In five years' time PBC will have moved on to real budget-holding.

• In five years' time I plan to get a motorbike (Ducati, I think).