Hang on a sec, did the last few months not actually happen? Did I slip into an exhaustion-induced coma in which I dreamt that NHS England had, at last, ‘got’ the desperate state of general practice and the GPC had gone all macho and militant? I ask, because I suddenly find myself reading headlines suggesting that GPs are ‘ideally placed’ to sort out pre-diabetes, and will be incentivised to do so via QOF tweaks and new enhanced services.
I’d quite like to go back into that coma
Let’s set aside for a moment the not inconsiderable points that a) dealing with pre-diabetes is going to be a gonad-grindingly huge and tedious task, worse even than looking after actual diabetics and b) even if we do identify everyone at risk of diabetes (aka ‘everyone’), there probably won’t be any exercise or diet classes locally to send them to, so any management plan would be down to, let’s think, oh yes, me.
Look, even if I did want to take this on and, as you can probably tell, I don’t, I don’t understand why I’m being given the ‘opportunity’. Because, before I slipped back into this God-awful pre-GP Forward View/pre-Urgent Prescription for General Practice parallel universe, I was quite enjoying another one in which the Government realised we GPs already have enough work to do and the GPC was suggesting that QOF was soon going to be clad in concrete boots and dumped into the nearest canal.
Or maybe I misconstrued in a positive light comments along the lines that ‘Workload and QOF are going to be “sorted out”’. Where I work, being ‘sorted out’ doesn’t mean being ramped up, it means being beaten up. And on that topic, would someone kindly punch me in the face? I’d quite like to go back into that coma.
Dr Tony Copperfield is a GP in Essex. You can follow him on Twitter @DocCopperfield
