Docs need to do remote consultations – report Doctors need to invest in telehealth tech to take the strain off services by conducting remote consultations, according to a study by health charity the Nuffield Trust. The report (PDF), which was commissioned by NHS England, said GP services would have to address increasing patient numbers due to an ageing demographic. The …
I would suggest the cast majority of GPs (mine excepted) could start with a decent booking system.
AFAIK, ours is the only one locally which has online booking (a godsend). Seems all others insist you have to ring on the day to discover there are no appointments.
And yet when I go to my GP the waiting room is empty even though next available booking is 1 week later and its the only appointment left and online seems to be 2-3 weeks.
And you are one of the lucky ones, amazingly. My surgery simply doesn't do bookings more than two weeks in advance, so if they are full then the response is "sorry we have no appointments available".
So unless it is an obvious hospital emergency - blood all over the floor etc - all the primary health care we have then is a 111 telephone call centre in Bicester.
If we're going to have remote consultations, let's at least use cheaper doctors overseas. For the last couple of decades we've become increasingly accustomed to foreign doctors (at the last count, 37% of BMA-registered doctors were trained overseas). Most patients won't notice the difference if their tele-GP is in India rather than down the road.
Most patients wouldn't notice the difference if their GP was a talkie toaster programmed to say "it's a viral infection come back in two weeks if it hasn't got better".
I can say that, a Doctor saying it would be struck off because the GMC can't tell the difference between political correctness and malpractice.
There are a number of basics that are necessary for older patient visits like pulse, respiration and blood pressure. Unless everyone is going to be fitted out with a basic test kit by their phone/tablet/PC, the consulting doctor ( I hate the stupid 'Clinician' word) will be short of information that he should always have.
Also see this: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-virtualdoctors-idUSKCN0X127G
The Reuters articles states a 25% fail rate in diagnosis in a ttrial with virtual diagnosis, so at minimum all doctors will need to undergo specific training to get the questions right, otherwise the litigation rate will go through the roof.
The Nuffield Trust is an excellent well meaning organisation but in this case I think they need to do more research before recommending anything that involves the NHS putting more patients and their data online.
"Clinician" is correct. Sadly. Referrals to my hospital department are sometimes made by nurses and physios with posh titles who don't know their pubo-rectalis from their olecranon.
Sometimes nurses have more common sense than doctors though - it's best not to be ill.
Some of my job can be done remotely, but best if I have close working relationship with people at the other end, not random people in different continents. For the rest I actually need to lay hands on the sickness units - or patients as the more old fashioned would say.
...GP services would have to address increasing patient numbers due to an ageing demographic.
The Department of Health estimates that, by 2018, there will be 2.9 million people with multiple long-term conditions, up from 1.8 million in 2012...
And the "target demographic" all have smart phones and the like do they? Has anyone actually bothered to check?
Curiously, although the headline includes the word "broadband" there is no mention of it in the article; would this be broadband for the health professionals (who probably do have a better than average service anyway, other than out in the sticks) or for the patients, in which case my comment above regarding the "target demographic" has to be expanded to see if they have broadband or indeed any internet connection. And, I suppose, Skype. A half decent survey might just find that they have other uses for their dwindling financial resources, or have neither the inclination nor the capability to master the technology involved; why should they?
Given the scandals that erupt around the 111 service from time to time this appears to be another giant leap backwards.
Looks like another grandiose scheme being set up to fail right from the outset, with the elderly and chronically ill patients being the losers.
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