Why Pulse is campaigning to reclaim GPs’ right to refer

Balancing the interests of the patient in the treatment or consulting room with the interests of the patients and the wider public not in either is what clinical commissioning is all about.

CCGs will need to carefully approach the management of their total allocation if they are to improve outcomes for all of their patients and improve the health of the total population they are responsible for. Clinical commissioners will need to prioritise their investments and disinvestments using evidence and business intelligence through effective planning. This will then allow existing professional freedoms to be maintained in the consulting room.

Continuing to do the very best for every patient in the consulting room and ignoring the impact on the CCG budget will inevitably result in the denial of treatments and services to patients outside the consulting room. This uninformed decommissioning will be evidence of the abdication of clinical leaders. CCGs can not afford to do the very best for every patient and need to determine how close they can afford to be for each patient.

GPs asked for commissioning responsibility and freedoms and must therefore accept accountability. CCGs who do not keep within their resource allocation will find their clinical freedoms restricted not by PCTs but by the NCB in the future.

Until GP's accept that they may need some mentoring or that some kind peer reviewed assessment followed by a practice audit is in place I suspect this kind of drive will continue.