Blair throws down challenge to GPs over NHS changes

The UK prime minister, Tony Blair, has promised doctors increased resources for the NHS if GPs are prepared to accept change. “If we don't modernise, the agenda will move to those who don't want to rebuild the NHS at all,” he warned at a recent conference of the BMA's General Practitioners Committee (GPC).

Mr Blair was speaking during a live video link to GPC Conference 2000 in Harrogate. He said that primary care was pivotal to the health service. “We want GPs to be the innovators and drivers for change.” There had to be better access and more services offered in primary care.

The prime minister answered questions from a panel of four GPs, who all told him of the problems of general practice. They said that they faced rising drug budgets, an inability to get their patients into hospital, and an increased workload.

“I work 70 hours a week,” Dr Helen Groom, a GP in Gateshead, told him. “You expect us to take on more and more with fewer and fewer people. You cannot expect us to be open 24 hours a day and still stay sane.”

Mr Blair admitted that the NHS was facing “very severe problems.” But he asked GPs to work with the government to make sure the necessary changes happen. “My fear is that if we don't make these changes people will become increasingly demoralised about when the NHS will get back on its feet,” he said.

Neither the prime minister nor the health secretary, Alan Milburn, who addressed the meeting in person afterwards, could understand how GPs could complain of increased workload and yet not embrace NHS Direct—the nurse led telephone advice line—and walk-in centres.

“There is nothing wrong,” Mr Blair said, “in trying to deliver different methods of health care.” He said that there did not have to be “one gateway into the health service” and that NHS Direct was complementary to general practice and not a threat to it.

Mr Blair's message was reinforced by Mr Milburn. He urged GPs to end what he called the phoney war between traditional surgeries and walk-in centres and NHS Direct—they complemented each other.

“I want nothing less than [a] reinvention of the NHS—what it does, the way it runs, and how it is organised,” said Mr Milburn. He said that his vision was for a single care system—health and social services—shaped around the particular needs of the individual patient.

Figure.

CHARLES KNIGHT/UNP

Tony Blair urged GPs to be “innovators for change”