Where is the building to construct our future?

Our GP commissioner at the coalface, Dr Clive Henderson, wants to know where the buildings are to create the vision for the brave new world

We are told form should follow function.

Services are to move into community settings, be more closely allied to local authority and be run by GP consortia.

What then is going to happen to PCT buildings? Are they to be sold to furnish a network of new health and social care centres?

New outpatient activity and day case surgery is to take place away from overcrowded and high overhead secondary care centres. But where? Suitable Primary Care buildings are thin on the ground, particularly in rural areas.

Nor do I see residential homes being replaced by nursing homes , served by properly trained staff who can check a blood sugar, manage a catheter, monitor a BP, check temperatures ,dress an ulcer, administer insulin, use telemonitors , change syringe drivers ,dip test urines ,assess/treat minor injuries etc etc which will hold back the tide of unnecessary admissions.

Financially strangled PCTs and Local Authorities are cutting the oxygen from emerging estates reform . Innovation is being stifled. Productivity is being prevented. Long term quality is being sacrificed because of short term battening down of the hatches of projected financial overspends.

Perhaps PCTs can take the breaks off a little when the necessary financial set aside for redundancy payments becomes clearer.

Seems we do need to get a move on to establish our new world before it is destroyed by hack and slash or withers on the vine.