I am horrified by your recent GP survey around substandard care in local hospitals and mentions of conflict between primary and secondary care (‘One GP in seven warns their local hospital is "dangerously substandard').
Anecdotally we all know hospital consultants have similar views on some GP surgeries, and it is just a matter of time before an unhelpful survey like that is done and also published. Soft intelligence like this is important, but only as part of a constructive two-way conversation.
Clinical commissioning groups are in a good position to take seriously integrated quality and continuous system improvement. It is about setting shared standards and encouraging shared incident reporting and shared learning. This is best achieved in a joint primary and secondary care forum, which is also where soft intelligence is best appraised.
CCGs are in a very good position to create such forums. I appreciate effective shared care and integrated care need hard work, proper resourcing, and system and behaviour change. For now, let us look beyond existing boundaries and vested interest and aspire to more.
From Dr Peter Scholten, Cambridge
