Sir, – I have to respond to my colleague Dr Ruairi Hanley (June 7th), who suggests that by joining primary care teams, GPs will cede control to the HSE and spend fruitless hours meeting with administrators. He has obviously never worked in a functioning primary care team.
My experience working as a GP in a deprived area in a fully fledged primary care team over the last eight years is quite at variance with his negative view. Any meetings we have are with fellow professionals on the front line of healthcare and they are patient focused and interdisciplinary.
Formal meetings are a fantastic opportunity to approach difficult clinical or social problems with a broad range of skills and knowledge; as a GP my patient’s care is greatly enhanced by this. Meetings over coffee or even in patients’ homes are frequent and fruitful. The ability to refer rapidly to other disciplines, such as physiotherapy and counselling psychology, within one’s team is of great benefit to patients.
The GP practices within such teams do not lose autonomy; quite the opposite, they gain a freedom and an added ability to provide effective care plans for patients, particularly those with complex needs. I do, of course, not agree with any GP being forced to join a primary care team and would resist such a prescriptive policy.
I agree with Dr Hanley that patient satisfaction with general practice is generally high. I believe that this satisfaction will be enhanced as more and more practices join properly functioning multidisciplinary teams and provide even more excellent, integrated and timely care. – Yours, etc,