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#GPnews: Patients in favour of an end to GP box-ticking

16:30 Patients have backed the BMA’s call for more GPs, longer appointments and an end to ‘box ticking’ to allow GPs to spend more time with them.

More than 70% of patients who responded to the survey have indicated their support for the measures, the BMA said. Just under half (46%) also agreed that GP premises needed investment.

These respondents are the first to return their ‘urgent prescription’ cards to the BMA for analysis.

15:30 The New NHS Alliance has reacted to Pulse’s story on one in eight practice nurse positions being vacant, by criticising universities and trusts for pushing nurses towards a career in hospitals rather than primary care.

Heather Henry, co-chair, New NHS Alliance, says: ’Twenty five years ago nurse leaders warned about the demographic time bomb in practice nursing. These messages were not heeded and the problem is now fully impacting on general practice at a time of unprecedented demand.

’We… need to challenge universities and trusts who point newly registered nurses towards secondary care in order to gain necessary experience before a career in primary care. We want to reverse this logic. The community is where people live their lives. The more nurses understand this, the better nurses they will become. We aim to challenge a wholly medical model because general practice is about family and community. These are the things that keep people well.’

12:30 Simon Stevens has said the NHS has to put in a ‘huge effort’ in the next 18 months to address the problems in primary care which have not been given the attention that other sectors receive.

The NHS England chief told delegates at the NHS Confederation 2016 conference in Manchester today that in the next few months ‘we’ve got a huge effort to help respond to the very genuine pressures that have been building in general practice, receiving far less attention than the pressure in other parts of the system.’

Adding that ‘on workforce, workload, on work redesign, if we don’t get these right in the next 18 months then – as a headline in the BMJ put it recently – if general practice fails then the whole of the NHS fails.’

He also said GPs would be central to soon to be announced developments in urgent care, with five key priorities from the urgent and emergency care review to be announce in coming weeks.

Mr Stevens said this would see more trained clinicians in NHS 111 saying they would be ‘souping up 111 and GP out-of-hours’ front-end, more clinical intensity and engagement there, as well as internal process issues and a big focus on delayed transfers of care and the interaction with social care.’

11:50 We’ll have more on Simon Stevens’ speech to NHS Confederation conference shortly. Meanwhile, here is the confederation’s take on it:



9:50 NHS England’s chief executive will announce today that more patients will be able to manage their conditions through their phones and tablets due to a funding injection.

The Telegraph says that millions of patients will get access to life-saving gadgets that can diagnose conditions in less than a minute, with innovations including a simple metal strip, which can be attached to a smart phone, in order to take a heart reading in just 30 seconds.

Simon Stevens will tell the NHS Confederation conference in Manchester today: ’The NHS has a proud track record of world firsts in medical innovation – think hip replacements, IVF, vaccinations and organ transplants to name just a few. But then getting wide uptake has often been slow and frustrating. Now – at a time when the NHS is under pressure – rather than just running harder to stand still, it’s time to grab with both hands these practical new treatments and technologies.

’In the rest of our lives we’re seeing the difference that innovative tech makes, and now the NHS will have a streamlined way of getting ground-breaking and practical new technologies into the hands of patients and our frontline nurses, doctors and other staff. By doing that, we can transform people’s lives.’