NAPC News 3 February 2010

Pledge To Crack Down On Overseas GPs

Tough news test to ensure that foreign doctors can speak good English and understand British medicines will be introduced for every doctor who provide night time and weekend cover, according to the press.

Doctors who fail the tests will have their details passed to the regulatory bodies, so that future employers are made fully aware of their shortcomings.

Delays In Care For Stroke Patients

Fewer than one in five stroke patients is moved to a dedicated unit within the recommended time, a new report has identified. Access to brain scans, clot-busting drugs was limited on weekends and evenings, meaning some patients had to wait too long.

Andy Burnham Will Force GPs To Compete

Health secretary, Andy Burnham, has revealed plans to drive increasing competition between practices in England.

Scrapping practice boundaries represents the ‘next stage of reform', said Mr. Burnham, with patients encouraged to seek out the most convenient practices, allowing ‘the extended hours journey to continue'. He said that removing practice boundaries was intended not just to allow patients to visit a GP closer to work, but to drive patients to vote with their feet.

Mr. Burnham's comments came as the General Practitioner Committee of the British Medical Association revealed an alternative vision for making the boundary proposals more flexible.

Mr. Burnham also stated that the government had no plans to cap GP profits, but warned the government would ratchet up pressure on GPs to invest more and to think about services in a different way.

The Department of Health also revealed last month that patients whose practices did not open extended hours would be offered evening and weekend appointments at neighbouring practices.

Drive Your Ambulance Too Fast And You Are Fired

Ambulance drivers face the sack if they ignore what has been called a ‘ludicrous order' not to drive too fast to emergencies.

According to the press, NHS bureaucrats decided that paramedics who drove as little as 10mph above the speed limit should face formal disciplinary action.

Politicians Need To Rethink Role Of Private Sector

Yesterday, the Guardian included a letter on the role of the private sector in the NHS. It was signed by Dr Hamish Meldurm, Chairman of Council, British Medical Association; Iain Chalmers, Editor, James Lind Library and co-founder, Cochrane Collaboration; Dr Peter Fisher, NHS Consultants' Association; Professor Harry Keen, President, NHS Support Federation; Professor Allyson Pollock, Director, Centre for International Public Health Policy, University of Edinburgh; Professor Wendy Savage, Co-Chair, Keep Our NHS Public; Dr Robin Stott, Co-Chair, Climate and Health Council; Julian Tudor Hart, Swansea University Medical School and fourteen others.

LINks Appeal

Sixty per cent of people would like to share their views on NHS services but only 30,000 individuals and organisations have joined local involvement networks, according to new government figures.

Andy Burnham has called for people to join LINks.

End Of Life Care

The commitment to improving end of life care must be maintained, the King's Fund has said in a report recommending a guarantees that every patient has 24 hour access to care, that commissioners should identify outcomes they wish to see from providers and that there should be a national evidence base on cost effectiveness and evaluations of models.

Cancer Cost Saving

The NHS should save money by decommissioning cancer services for which there is no significant benefit, such as routine follow-up for breast cancer patients, according to King's Health Partners Integrated Cancer Centre Director, Arnie Purushotham. He told a conference on the cancer reform strategy that follow-ups were unnecessary for the significant majority of patients.

Clot Challenge

All patients admitted to hospital should be assessed for the risk of developing blood clots and then given preventative treatment, according to NICE guidance on the prevention of venous thromboembolism. The operating framework for 2010/11 says trusts that do not make significant improvements in preventing venous thromboembolisms will be fined.

GP Takeover

NHS South West Essex is seeking alternative providers to take over and run some of its general practices. The primary care trust runs 10 practices, with a further 71 run by GPs. It aims to offload the 10 it runs over the next 18 months.

Director of Primary Care, Marc Davis, said that all employed GPs and practice staff would be given the opportunity to transfer to the new organisations.

Herbal Remedies Can Work Against Heart Disease Drugs

Herbal remedies taken by millions of Britons can pose a serious risk to health by interfering with medicines commonly prescribed for heart disease, doctors say.

Warnings that supplements such as St. John's wort, ginkgo biloba and garlic can diminish the effectiveness of drugs or cause dangerous side-effects in certain patients have been restated by researchers in the United States.

Was Swine Flu Ever A Real Threat

Dr Wolfgang Wodarg, former head at the Council for Europe, has criticised the World Health Organisation for its handling of the swine flu outbreak, accusing it of ‘faking' the pandemic and being under the influence of the pharmaceutical industry.

Although the government is now holding talks with GlaxoSmithKline to find a way of disposing of 60m unwanted doses of vaccine, analysts predict that it and other vaccine manufacturers stand to make windfall profits of around £4bn.

Genes Give Clue To Tamoxifen Dose

More personalised treatment for breast cancer patients could spring from a new gene discovery, according to scientists. Experts have identified a gene called FKBPL, which predicts how women will respond to the commonly used drug, Tamoxifen.

Scientists at Queen's University Belfast have found that high levels in FKBPL in breast cancer cells suggest a woman will respond well to Tamoxifen and have a better chance of survival than women with low levels of the gene.

Campaigners Pile Pressure On MPs Over Right To Die

Pressure has been mounting on the government not to prosecute relatives who help terminally ill loved ones to take their own lives. Campaigners said ‘sooner or later' MPs are going to have to confront the issue as a poll revealed that four in five people back assisted suicide.

The YouGov survey also revealed that three quarters of people believe the law should be amended to allow assisted suicide, which is now a crime punishable by up to 14 years in prison.

Clawback Fear As ‘Tax Amnesty' Begins

Panicked GPs are inundating accountants with calls after HRMC announced a ‘tax amnesty' in the run up to an investigation of 20 years' worth of doctors' tax records/

HMRCC said it had ‘specific intelligence pointing to underpaid tax in the medical profession', although it was unable to provide estimates as to the number of doctors involved.

Laurence Slavin, a partner at specialist medical accountants, Ramsay Brown and Partners, said the HMRC could rule that GPs had over-claimed for expenses relating to the use of their car or home for work purposes. There was a fear, he said, that GPs had underpaid tax here or there, but there was a bigger worry that expenses would not stand up to scrutiny.

The revenue could rule, he continued, that claiming 50 per cent of car use was too high. From its letter, what HMRC said, it was pretty simple to set up an enquiry.

The HMRC is offering a three week amnesty for doctors who may have underpaid tax in the past to rectify the situation. Anyone failing to come forward and subsequently found to have underpaid tax could be hit with a fine.

Mr. Slavin said that if GPs were selected for a full investigation , it could take more than a year to process one year's worth of accounts.

GPC chairman, Dr. Laurence Buckman, said the amnesty was standard practice in other sectors, and GPs who had kept organised accounts had nothing to fear.