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1 month ago | 
pulsetoday.co.uk | Maya Dhillon
Pulse LIVE is taking place in London today and tomorrow, with highlights including a panel discussion on GP unemployment, and a special address from primary care minister Stephen Kinnock. Pulse editor-in-chief Jaimie Kaffash will lead the workforce debate today, entitled ‘Are unemployed GPs collateral damage of the NHS’s big plans?’, following on from the recent white paper from Pulse publisher Cogora on the recruitment/unemployment crisis.
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2 months ago | 
pulsetoday.co.uk | Maya Dhillon
Dr David Turner welcomes the reduction of QOF as the end of tick-box culture in general practice As we count down to QOF year-end, we are once again reminded how the law of diminishing returns works. Repeated phone calls to the reluctant attenders to ‘please book in for your annual BP check/foot check/mental health annual review/smear’, are frequently met by an unanswered phone, a reluctant agreement to attend which will never materialise or a flat refusal.
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2 months ago | 
pulsetoday.co.uk | Maya Dhillon
Pulse editor Sofia Lind on what the Government’s plan to dissolve NHS England might mean for the future of general practice
Yesterday the Government proved that it is not afraid of making big NHS decisions. Whilst it had talked about repealing 2012 reforms, completely abolishing NHS England – an organisation employing 6,500 people – is taking its own promise very literally.
The GP leaders that Pulse spoke to gave the news a tentative welcome.
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2 months ago | 
pulsetoday.co.uk | Maya Dhillon
The Government has announced that it is abolishing NHS England to ‘reduce duplication’ with the Department of Health and Social Care. We will be featuring all the reaction to this news from the BMA to grassroots GPs. This will be constantly updated.
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2 months ago | 
pulsetoday.co.uk | Maya Dhillon
Copperfield waxes lyrical about the virtues of a polypill for all over-50s It’s great to see the polypill concept getting renewed impetus. And I am absolutely not being ironic here. The idea of a fire-and-forget preventive treatment containing low doses of CV-busting drugs doled out to everyone from aged 50 is the greatest medical idea ever. Any naysayers must be so stupid/shortsighted that they should be denied the polypill and bow to survival of the fittest rules.
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2 months ago | 
pulsetoday.co.uk | Maya Dhillon
Liberal Democrat MP for Horsham John Milne on how the restrictions local planning authorities face have caused a deficit of GP surgeries and other public infrastructure In my constituency of Horsham, there’s one complaint I hear very loudly and very often: How can we keep building thousands more houses every year without the schools, clinics and transport to support them? Why should anyone believe things will get better when past promises have been broken so often?
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2 months ago | 
pulsetoday.co.uk | Maya Dhillon
Five years after Covid hit and lockdown began, Dr Paul O’Reilly reflects on the best day of his GP career Goodness! Is it really five years now since Covid? That bizarre time when the entire country shut down, there was tumbleweed on Regent Street, epidemiologists became household names and Boris ‘followed the science’. Maybe I’m just getting a bit middle-aged and maudlin, but it takes me back to the best day of my (medical) life.
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2 months ago | 
pulsetoday.co.uk | Maya Dhillon
Copperfield tears the 2025/26 GP contract a new one, asking: whatever happened to collective action? New contract, same tropes. A smoke-and-mirrors financial offering, tick, an intriguing little bonus, tick, a sting in the tail, tick. Specifically, in that first category, we have the increased global sum funding. But we also have the NI hike, the NLW rise, the recycling of money from QOF, the take-away-the-number-you-first-thought-of and, tadaa…er….ah.
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2 months ago | 
pulsetoday.co.uk | Maya Dhillon
Dr Margret Ikpoh looks beyond the 2025/26 GP contract and ponders how it will impact the general practice workforce crisis Our practice’s daily 8am scramble involves ensuring that we have enough rooms for our staff to use. I lost the privilege of my own office six years ago when we merged with two other local practices to survive. Although the practice got bigger, the space to carry out the day job – including seeing our patients – got smaller.
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2 months ago | 
pulsetoday.co.uk | Maya Dhillon
Dr Kamal Sidhu scrutinises the details of the new GP contract and asks just how helpful it will actually be for general practice After many years of an imposed contract, the contract for 2025/26 was agreed last week. Whilst the headlines and the sentiment has been positive from DHSC and the BMA General Practitioner Committee (GPC), the initial optimism quickly fades as one digests the detail.
