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GPs call for national body to take control of primary care

Local GP leaders attending the Welsh LMCs conference this Saturday will debate issues including the scrapping of ‘ineffective’ health boards.

The conference will feature speeches from the Welsh BMA GP Committee chair Dr Charlotte Jones as well as Welsh health secretary Vaughan Gething.

A motion from Morgannwg LMC suggests that the Welsh Government should ‘euthanise ineffective and unsupportive health boards with their needlessly expensive primary care management structures and create a single primary care body to administer primary care’.

The LMC further argues that health boards ‘ignore nationally binding negotiations’; are ‘ineffective and morally bankrupt’; and that the ‘squirrel funding away from GMS for secondary care’.

Welsh LMCs will also be discussing incentives for GP partners, including a motion suggesting the Welsh Government ‘show their appreciation for independent contractors by significantly rewarding them for keeping general practice alive in the crisis that we are in’.

The Agenda Committee will also suggest measures to reduce the cost of indemnity only apply to GPs ‘in substantive posts’ and ‘not locum GPs’, ‘thereby bring GPs back into permanent positions and go some way to ease the recruitment crisis’.

Another motion calls on GPC Wales to ‘define and agree with government a manageable and safe workload for GP teams and introduce measures to stop practices being forced to take on more work above this level’.

It suggests this should include a cap on the number of patient contacts in a day as well as giving GP practices the ability to turn away foreign nationals for treatment

The Welsh LMCs conference takes place in Chester on Saturday 20 January.

Featured motions in full

Morgannwg: That Conference demands Welsh Government put an end to the needless postcode lottery, euthanise ineffective and unsupportive Health Boards with their needlessly expensive primary care management structures and create a single primary care body to administer primary care.

Morgannwg: That Conference: 

(i) is appalled that Welsh Government allows Health Boards to ignore nationally binding negotiations,

(ii) is appalled that Welsh Government delegates solutions to ineffective and morally bankrupt Health Boards to find local solutions for patently national issues,

(iii) is appalled that Welsh Government allows Health Boards to squirrel funding away from GMS for secondary care access schemes such as ‘Musculoskeletal screening’ and ‘community cardiology’,

(iv) believes that GPCW should set up a working party to explore changing the structure of LMCs in Wales to develop a stronger and more coherent voice to lay bare and correct this behaviour.

Gwent: That Conference calls on Wales Government to show their appreciation for independent contractors by significantly rewarding them for keeping General Practice alive in the crisis that we are in.

Agenda Committee: That Conference believes that Wales has a unique opportunity to design an indemnity solution which could:

(i) better the new proposals being implemented in England regarding professional indemnity, and Wales should ensure that new regulations are implemented with haste.

(ii) be for GPs in substantive posts and not locum GPs, and thereby bring GPs back into permanent positions and go some way to ease the recruitment crisis

Agenda Committee: That Conference calls on GPC Wales to define and agree with government a manageable and safe workload for GP teams and introduce measures to stop practices being forced to take on more work above this level. This would include:

(i) a sensible cap on the number of patients a GP can be expected to safely see in a day for the safety of patients and sanity of GPs.

(ii) clarity that GPs facing sustainbility challenges can decline to treat foreignnationals and signpost to the Health Board for alternative provision.

Source: BMA