Virtual hospitals will be an actual arse-ache
Copperfield picks apart how the new virtual hospitals will undoubtedly involve GPs taking up more workload
So there’s the first bombshell of the new year. That virtual hospital plan wasn’t just a virtual idea dreamed up on the back of a virtual envelope. It’s real, sort of, and clicks into action from 2027 with an initial focus on prostate and menstrual problems. Incredible. I thought digital was an abstract concept; I didn’t realise it will literally save on rubber gloves.
So what are the other supposed benefits of this brave new world? Well, apparently, video appointments with consultants as remote in interest and rapport as they are in miles will ‘make treatment as easy as online banking’. Yes, I guess managing urine flow is pretty much the same as handling cash flow, with rather less to lose when a scammer clears out your medical record.
Oh, also, it makes healthcare ‘more democratic’. Which is quite a lofty claim and one the digitally illiterate or disinclined might like to disagree with, if only the feedback form wasn’t online only.
To be honest, though, it’s hard to pick faults in this scheme, but I can offer two.
First, how are these virtual hospitals configured, exactly? Do not-actual hospitals have not-actual HR, not-actual accountability and not-actual lines of communication, too? I can’t see an actual problem there.
Second, many of the conditions listed as virtual hospital fodder – like IDA and IBD – need significant input beyond a remote chat, like examination, investigation and management. This is inevitably going to involve GPs in much non-core pre and post referral work. Plus a lot of not-joined-up local investigation, unless the cabling for HS2 includes a 140 mile long colonoscope. All of which will fall, in a very real way, to us GPs.
Still, what’s new? Our local hospitals are already uncommunicative, work dumpy and functionally remote, leaving us to pick up the pieces. So the future’s already here, virtually.
Dr Tony Copperfield is a GP in Essex
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Sentences you don’t want to hear:
“Captain, we’ve defused all the bombs…virtually”
“Nasa Space Mission ready for take-off…virtually”
“So Mr Smith, we’ve cured the cancer…virtually”
[At a Dignitas clinic] “a few seconds after we’ve injected the drugs, you will be dead…virtually”
“Babe, I love you…virtually”
“They think it’s all over, it is…..virtually”
And now add “Oh, I saw the consultant and he examined me…virtually!!”
Don’t worry Tony.
Every patient will jave a fully-AI enabled mobile device by 2026, and our job will only be to tell them where to shove it!