Cash incentives for GPs under Labour’s radical plan to cut NHS waiting lists

15 comments

1. The thing I like about this initiative is it is using existing funds. However, what will they be foregoing to switch funds and the time to this? There is always a downside, I’m wondering if each local administration will decide how to implement this or if the Government will have an overall plan to stop spending money and time on one thing and transfer their efforts to this. Or will an overreaching admin decide for each individual surgery.

   The other thing I would like to know is why this is not already happening. If they think it will be easy to do this why has it not already be done. Is it really just money that will solve this because if that’s the case then why hasn’t throwing money at the NHS ever worked in the past. Won’t the money just get absorbed into the system without any noticeable change like it has done for decades?

2. Waiting lists nothing at all to do with letting 700,000+ people into the country every year no sir. Just shovel more money to GPs already earning high six figures a year, it is sure to work this time!

3. I have an idea: treatment on the first visit.

   Rationale: over last several years (and before as well) I contracted upper respiratory tract infections, on average 2-3 per year. Each of them in the end required an antibiotic treatment. This is all on patient record. Yes, in order to receive treatment, I had, on average, to get and go to 4 different appointments. How wasteful is this?

   Also if I go early, because I know what’s coming, I’m told it’s too early, if I go 2 weeks after infection, I’m told I’m healing, when I go again 3 weeks after infection, I’m told that I probably have asthma and they prescribe an inhaler…. On yet another visit I finally get antibiotics and then they don’t see me again until I’m ill again…

4. How about they work 5 days a week, open on Saturdays, and be on call after hours. Just like they were before.
   They get paid enough now start earning it.
   Who knows perhaps a&e won’t be as busy.

5. Cash incentives don’t improve patient experience – At my old surgery the nurse was supposed to just be doing my smear – She then at the end after I was about to go said also did a chlamydia test… I was like ‘Why?’ As she did it with out telling me beforehand what she was doing or asking me. Me thinking there must have been some symptom? Wondering how that was even possible with my sexual history… Then she said it was because there was an incentive on the go where they were getting paid to do them… So she did it with out asking me to make sure they got the money.

   No, I didn’t have chlamydia. Now alright is catching STIs in the population a good thing? Was it just a swab, yeah… It’s not a huge deal really… But from a trust angle it was. Someone in a position of immense trust used me for monetary gain without asking me. That’s not okay.

6. Deus Ex Machina… simple answer to complex problems suddenly pops up, and everything magically improves with no downsides.. It will improve, won’t it? And there definitely won’t be downsides??

7. Unlikely to be very incentivising if they just get smashed by tax and NI though. Esp if they have childcare costs.

8. Labour can’t win can they, so waiting lists are a problem. Labour try to tackle it, people complain doctors have too much money. Seriously? I’m just fucking happy a government is actively supporting the NHS instead of finding ways for their friends to make money off it.

   They aren’t saying ALL the issues will be fixed it’s just part of a solution, come on now!

9. Good idea, if there are cash incentives for actually solving the problems, for instance seeing somebody within a week or addressing a problem without bouncing back and forth between a dozen appointments.

   But if it turns into yet another badly-designed NHS incentive scheme (See also: The early morning phone queue) then it’s not a good idea. Need to avoid those pitfalls.

10. Can’t we just have GP surgeries for under 65s? Every time I go into my doctors it’s always a bunch of fossils sitting there.

    Feels like there’d be so fewer people waiting if we didn’t dump the elderly into the same surgeries.

11. Hot take but GPs are the most overrated doctors and them playing this game of chicken where they pretend they’re too valuable to do their job is annoying.

12. Are there any documents out there that describe what doctors incentives are currently. How they get paid, what they get paid for, how much per patients registered, per call, per appointment. What the difference is to what the doctor receives or is charged for referring to private over NHS services etc.

    I happened to see some notes on my medical record and the number of calls and appointments on my record were way higher than has actually occurred. If they are paid per call or appointment then I suspect widespread fraud is likely.

13. Boomers refuse to sell their house to pay for the years of social care they want… therefore Hugh pressure on the NHS.

14. Aren’t they earning enough as it is? I can’t get a doctors appointment at all. Last year I had an ear infection and it got so bad I had to take myself to A&E because I couldn’t get a doctors appointment. I apologised to the doctor at the hospital because I felt I was wasting their time but he said A&E are so busy because people like me can’t get doctors appointments and they come to hospital as a last resort. Force the doctors to do their jobs!

15. Because cash incentives work really well at present !!

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