CSD Report
For East and West Sussex LMCs
Dr Russell Brown
17 October 2013
The subcommittees of GPC meet three times a year and each have their own email listserver to facilitate discussions. I was recently elected by the committee to be its Deputy Chair, another step on my progress to a life peerage*. Information about the roles and functions of the various subcommittees can be found on the new and improved GPC pages of the BMA website at www.bma.org.uk/gpc.
After considering the committee's business plan, based in large part on relevant Motions from both LMC Conference and BMA ARM, we briefly discussed BMA guidance on Ethical Procurement.
Subsequently we began to discuss new models of service provision. GPC guidance on collaboration and federation will be coming out soon. It is a good paper. However, we agreed that it should be one part of a toolkit and that practices wold need more information on other elements of survival as well. This is a work in progress but one we hope to prioritise. There are already models in use in various parts of the country, including Birmingham and Hertfordshire. It is my view that practices will to consider the future with some urgency and begin to plan now for 3-5 years time.
We were joined by Chaand Nagpaul mid morning and discussion turned to the state or negotiations. I have written as much as I am able in my GPC report on this matter. The morning's discussions in CSD helped inform the discussion at GPC in the afternoon.
The next meeting is to be held on 14 November. If LMC members or other constituent GPs would like to raise matters for discussion, please contact me or the LMC office.
I hope you have found this report helpful. Please feedback so that I can ensure my reports are useful. Feel free to email me if you would like to comment or ask me anything. Comments can also be posted on my blog where this report will also be posted at www.thebrownstuff.blogspot.com
Dr Russell Brown
*For the absence of doubt, this is a joke.
GPC Report
For East and West Sussex LMCs
Dr Russell Brown
17 October 2013
The GPC held its meeting on 17 October. This months meeting was in two parts, with the morning being devoted to subcommittee meetings. Of the three GPC members in the federation of SSLMCs, Julius Parker is the Deputy Chair of Contracts and Regulations, Richard Van Mallaerts is on Clinical and Prescribing and I am Deputy Chair of Commissioning and Service Development. Each of us will be writing short, separate reports on our subcommittee meetings which will be circulated by the office in due course to all the LMCs in the federation.
The afternoon session was dominated by discussions about the state and progress of the negotiating process. As ever, faces were grim, as we are faced by a government who seem to not wish to understand General Practice and how vital and efficient we are. Negotiations are at a delicate stage and there may be more news next week that I can share. At present, GPC is engaged in discussion to help formulate a plan at the suggestion of Jeremy Hunt to both help him and protect us. Whether anything positive will come of it remains to be seen. If agreement can be reached there is potential for gains on both sides. If agreement cannot be reached, the government have form on how they behave.
An update on Comms revealed a significant improvement to the GP part of the BMA website with a presentation by the web development team. You will note the absence of my customary "h" from the words "BMA website". It is still a work in progress and search for example needs more development but colleagues can view the "new" site at www.bma.org.uk/GPC. It certainly seems more easy to find relevant information. A comms group is in existence in electronic form and this is being formalised to try and get communications to be more proactive. With any luck, we will soon be in a position of leading news rather than reacting days after everyone else. BMA processes are often glacial in their progress and this work is an effort to make GPC specifically more responsive to events. A separate update on media work (related to but separate from the comms work) was postponed until November after the afternoon was interrupted by a fire alarm for the best part of an hour. An investigation into whether Mr Hunt has cameras in the BMA Council chamber is underway, as the timing was interesting.
An update on the ethnicity bias in the CSA was given. Colleagues will have seen reports of the issue in the national media, with a defensive RCGP and GMC. A judicial review of the processes is underway.
The next meeting is to be held on 14 November. If LMC members or other constituent GPs would like to raise matters for discussion, please contact me or the LMC office.
I hope you have found this report helpful. Please feedback so that I can ensure my reports are useful. Feel free to email me if you would like to comment or ask me anything. Comments can also be posted on my blog where this report will also be posted at www.thebrownstuff.blogspot.com
Dr Russell Brown
