Letters: Becoming a GP is not an ‘easier’ option

Saving general practice

Sir: Regarding J. Meirion Thomas’s article (‘Medical emergency’, 4 June), traditional general practice continues to thrive in private medicine. For a 20-minute consultation costing £80, a patient can still get a rapid face-to-face appointment. I believe historians will record that NHS general practice reached its zenith in the mid-1990s when John Major was PM and most patients phoned their GP before calling an ambulance. The rot set in under Tony Blair, when he abolished ‘fund-holding’ (a good example of levelling-down) and we lost control of waiting lists and many ‘in-house’ services such as physiotherapy, counselling and minor surgery. The end came under Gordon Brown and the new contract, so that few GPs now provide end-of-life/palliative care, obstetrics and emergency treatment. If general practice is to recover within the NHS, we must look at a European model where the pay system encourages doctors to practise medicine and gives patients the power to choose whom they wish to see and when.