This blog was written in response to this BMJ Head to Head debate on whether GPs should be paid to reduce unnecessary referrals.
As someone living with long-term health
conditions, I want the NHS to be both ethical and financially sustainable. It
shouldn’t be that those two characteristics are mutually exclusive.
As a self-management coach for the NHS
working with people with long-term health conditions, I often see people
desperate for a referral or fed up with too many different referrals. Those two
sentiments aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive either.
My interest in this topic lies not with the
processes that seem to be driving the arguments, but about the conversations
that happen between GPs and their patients and how referrals are discussed and decided upon.