Workload dump prevention causes loads of work

I’m stunned. Cheshire and Merseyside ICS has produced a consensus document to tackle ‘inappropriate transfer of work’.

So say goodbye to workload dump involving blood test requests, result interpretation/action, fit notes, onward referral and outpatient prescriptions.

And say hello, presumably, to hosdocs and GPs running hand-in-hand through soft-focus fields of corn and having primary/secondary care hybrid babies.

Amazing.

Hang on, though. Aren’t specialists supposed to be doing all this stuff already? And might there be a catch? Why, yes and definitely! Because the quid pro quo is that GP letters will need to meet certain quality/clarity standards. And referrals will need to box-tick a mandated level of pre-referral assessment and investigation. And chronic disease will need to hit optimal targets before surgical referral. Etc.

So that carrot starts to look a bit like a stick. Oh, and apparently the rules are bendable ‘according to circumstances’, those circumstances presumably meaning that specialists can forget their half of the bargain because they’re, well, special. So that stick starts to look a bit like a taser. No wonder I’m stunned.

Dr Tony Copperfield is a GP in Essex. Read more of Copperfield’s blogs here