27. Dr Andrew Green

Dr Andrew Green has played a powerful role this year in stemming the rising flow of workload to GPs from various governmental bodies and agencies.

As chair of the GPC’s clinical and prescribing subcommittee he has been a key voice articulating the counter argument to potentially harmful – if well intentioned – interventions in areas such as the primary prevention of CVD and dementia.

The Hedon GP is playing a key role in talks to modify NICE’s recommended QOF indicator implementing the 10% risk threshold for primary prevention with statins.

He was also outspoken about NICE’s recent recommendation that GP practices should check at least once a year whether their elderly or vulnerable patients are at risk from living in a cold home – branding it ‘ludicrous’.

He says: ‘I do believe that we are seeing the slowing and perhaps even the reversing of the pendulum-swing of increasing intervention. Doctors concerned about overdiagnosis, over-investigation and overtreatment are no longer seen as eccentric but have become appreciated as an essential brake on increasingly aggressive management.

‘There remains much work to do of course, and those of us who see patients as more than the sum of their data will need to continue to make nuisances of ourselves for a long time to come.’

Dr Green says his biggest achievement – in common with many other GPs – is surviving yet another year in general practice.

He will be busy over the coming year working with the Health Foundation as it looks at measures of GP quality for the health secretary, possibly resulting in a scorecard for practices.

He says: ‘At best, this work could replace much of the nonsense with which we are currently afflicted; at worse it could be yet another series of targets and hoops, so we have to get this right first time. Dr Jennifer Dixon of the Health Foundation is well aware of the challenge this will be and I look forward to working with her.’

Dr Green is also the GPC representative for Lincolnshire and East Yorkshire.