For the best part of a decade the quadruple aim has been a cornerstone of Londonwide LMCs’ vision for general practice. You can read Dr Michelle Drage, our Chief Executive, explaining its importance ahead of our annual conference in 2017.
It is encouraging to see that the quadruple aim is a cornerstone of the new BMA manifesto for change ‘Caring, supportive, collaborative: a future vision for the NHS’, published in advance of this year’s key political conferences. This positive document enshrines a number of ideas and principles supported and campaigned for by Londonwide LMCs’.
Many of the themes in the document will be familiar to those of you who have been following our calls for improvement over the years:
- more investment in workforce and premises, to support a community-level, multidisciplinary approach to care.
- importance of prioritising prevention work ahead of spending money on headline grabbing initiatives.
- importance of adapting the health and social care system to facilitate patient flow through it.
In particular, we are pleased to see the focus on creating a supportive culture, which values its workforce and empowers doctors to work across traditional divides. The document calls for the Government and NHS to:
- Bring the UK doctor/patient ratio up from 2.8 per 1,000 patients to 3.8, in line with other similarly prosperous EU countries.
- Introduce more protected learning and development time, including for GPs.
- Overhaul the CQC’s GP regulation system so there is less duplication of reporting between the CQC as a regulator and NHS England as the overseer of contractual compliance.
- End competitive tender requirements for CCGs, making NHS providers automatically preferred providers.
- Reform how individual NHS providers are held to account, focussing on encouraging behaviours that improve patient care in the health system as a whole, rather than narrow organisational priorities.
- Move hospitals away from payment by activity and towards collaborating across the system to prevent ill-health.
Last updated : 18 Sep 2019