Speaking exclusively to Digital Health News, the medical director of GP at Hand has defended the service against accusations it ‘cherry picks’ patients.
Mobasher Butt said it was “astonishing” to see the “traction” of GP at Hand, with recent figures showing an average of 4,000 registrations a month.
However he did admit there have been “challenges”.
The service has met some fierce criticism, with concerns that it ‘cherry picks’ younger, healthier patients, taking resources away from local NHS general practices that offer long-term care to all.
“Some parts of the medical community have put their union hats on and voiced concerns,” acknowledged Butt.
“We feel these are not justified. On the cherry-picking debate, it has been eye-opening to see how many of my peers, especially GPs, do not understand GP funding.
“Doctors are paid six times more for treating an elderly female than a younger male.”
Butt also said he would “not have been keen” to launch a service if he felt it could “exclude groups”.
Another issue which emerged has been patients not realising they are deregistering from their current GP when they sign up for the service.
Butt insisted the company is a “responsible organisation” which is not “trying to pull the wool over people’s eyes”.
He said: “We have done our very best to make it clear.”
Dr Jefferies & Partners in Fulham, south west London, was the first to offer the Babylon-powered GP at Hand service from November 2017.
Papers from Hammersmith and Fulham Clinical Commissioning Group have shown that there are concerns about paying for the service. “List size growth associated with the GP at Hand practice” has not been allocated in the CCG’s funding for 2018/19, Hammersmith and Fulham CCG Primary Care Commissioning Committee was told in March.
This has created “significant cost pressures”, which resulted in the CCG being unable to balance its finances.
On the topic of Hammersmith and Fulham CCG having to cough up an extra £10.6 million to continue running the service, Butt said the organisation was working “closely with the CCG”.
2 May 2018 @ 17:00
Ali Kahn Hichingbrooke where is our money
from Union Hat
28 April 2018 @ 15:41
I don’t get the logic here. People calling GPs evil because they’re not getting with the times? How does that make sense when GP at Hand is a service where patients get to see (guess who) a GP!
The bottleneck is not technology or lack of patients. The bottleneck is that there are no GPs left and the number is going down every year. When are people going to realise this and address the underlying problem of lack of doctors / nurse practitioners / paramedics etc?
29 April 2018 @ 16:44
The other thing that I would like to point out is that GP at Hand actually gives very good perks to GPs. The pay and benefits are very generous compared to what the NHS offers.
As a GP I’d be happy to work for them.
If this is what the public wants then great! GPs will be happy to join and enjoy the perks.
But, if this does happen then the bottle neck will still be that there aren’t enough GPs to meet demand and we’ll be back at square one with patients having to wait weeks to see a GP and we will also have lost local practices in the process…
27 April 2018 @ 17:48
I think part of the debate is what kind of NHS do we want and how much do we want to pay for it. Is the NHS here for essentially well people to use up all the resource on stuff that will basically get better by itself or is it to deliver health care that is needed? want/need. reduce health inequalities – even out the life expectancy gap etc. this service responds to want not need its a middle class tesco 24/7 generation answer to a trivial problem. now i dont have problems with that if its a private service but should nhs be spending money on it – when the NHSs answer to solving the current funding crisis is to promote more self care not less. If you read any of Prof Barbara Starfield’s work on what makes a successful health service its investing in primary care – the registered list -based in an area concentrating on health promotion, vaccination, screening, and early detection of disease – managing chronic diseases in a holistic patient centered way – using audit and outcome measures not just devoting more and more resource to fit well individuals with a cough for 3 days who want antibiotics as they thing incorrectly it will make them better. the who gets the money is a red herring – its the breaking of the local practice delivering local care to its community with continuity that is the problem. ok you might say that isnt happening but thats not the GPs fault – years of underfunding, years of poor workforce planning – years of politicians wanting soundbites and not planning over years – years of in year budget balancing… we are in danger of throwing away a service that the rest of the world aspire to and the evidence suggests works. we should be making general practice better not replacing it with a call center – it will cost more in the end and when all these people really get ill.. then they will be stuffed!
27 April 2018 @ 12:31
The current system is failing and letting down far too many patients. All those with mobility issues, long term conditions busy lives, full time jobs etc.
GPs could have come together to form federations, offer better access, economies of scale, digital health technology, but they chose not to. The contract / payment model is even deliberately geared towards this!
Instead GPs have ignored, alienated and disenfranchised great swathes of the population by designing services around themselves instead of patients.
So instead of all this hysteria and caterwauling you need to fix your services. You have long fought for your right to be independent contractors, so its on you to fix this. You can’t have your cake and eat it.
We we’re not cherry picked you drove us away.
27 April 2018 @ 18:08
you may misunderstand the concept of independent contractor. we have to deliver GMS care to the GMS contract. the contract isnt written as we would write it. put general practice on a PBR contract like the hospitals had and see how much more you get.
27 April 2018 @ 18:14
“Instead GPs have ignored, alienated and disenfranchised great swathes of the population by designing services around themselves instead of patients.” where is your evidence for this? we have 24500 pts – we see over 80% of them at least once a year – the average pt attends us 5.5 times a year – 96.7% would recommend us in our last gp survey and 94.9% positive on our FFT. we open early mornings some late evening saturday ams.
2 May 2018 @ 22:47
Moving away from PbR to aligned services contract
27 April 2018 @ 08:51
Good to see Babylons side of the debate here.
This has been a topic of debate since the ‘fierce criticism’ last time. What GP’s and the wider HC systems need to realise is that the digital population feel they get service from an App on their smart phone rather than being turned away from a GP’s phone system.
Babylon and others (yes there are other digital apps available) are obviously disrupting a cosy/faltering service. This is a step towards progress and collaboration between philosophies maybe?