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The best way to hold GPs in 2020 accountable? A microchip in our brains

I predict an end to death. Not because we’ve finally conquered the senescence of the telomeres, but because there will be no one to do the paperwork.

GPs will be in central offices directing virtual paper trails, so won’t have met their patients. All deaths, therefore, however predicable, will be reported to the coroner.

There will be full-time GP admin roles, paid just above minimum wage and coordinating every aspect of patients’ lives. GPs will be held accountable to the CCG, the PCN, the GMC and NHS England – you’ll probably be fired. But no one will notice, because PAs will be seeing acute illness, PPs conducting home visits, and RGNs leading chronic condition management.

Patients won’t just read what we write, but what we think. They’ll have 24/7 access to microchips in GPs, via a bot called Mattie.

Patients will have 24/7 access to microchips in GPs, via a bot called Mattie

A secretary will be appointed to handle complaints about GPs’ dreams. They’ll be managed by the Giant Mind Control Unit, an offshoot of the GMC, staffed by former hospital managers and ambitious physician associates paid £1m a year.

GPs will be banned from eating lunch at their desks – too much time wasted fiddling with implements. Instead, special order packs will be provided for daily enteral feeding. Mimicking normal GP meals, these will fall short of the nutrients necessary for cerebral functioning, ensuring that the virtual GPs appear more real than the endangered species formally known as human GPs.

Life expectancy will flatline – no precordial thump or Nellie the elephanting will revive it. Patients’ obsessive monitoring will lead them to the realisation that life isn’t worth living.

Meanwhile, any drug that does any good will be sold to America in exchange for capital investment in 40 new London hospitals, where training is solely six-month courses in medical astrology. These will exclusively manage genomically sequenced newborns, in rooms equipped with crystal balls and datasets designed into constellations.

Finally, the pension tax paid by the few GPs who are still seeing patients will result in their being forced to sell their homes and move in with their children.

Happy TTIP New Year!

Dr Charlotte Alexander is a GP in Surrey