Mary Hawking
Dunstable
GP with a long-standing interest in Health Informatics and IM&T in the NHS - and as a tool in improving care of patients.
(Just look at the changes in General Practice since I entered practice in 1979 - and especially since the near universal use of computerised records!)
I am a member of the PHCSG, UKCHIP level 3, member of the NHS Faculty of Health Informatics and Committee member EMIS NUG since 1994.
Recent activity
Comments (126)
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Comment on: Call to overhaul primary cancer care
As a GP, I'm slightly uneasy about shifting the blame for lack of early diagnosis onto patients and GPs. "An excerpt published in The Guardian said: “Efforts now need to be directed at promoting early diagnosis for the very large number (over 90 per cent) of cancer patients who are diagnosed as a result of their symptoms, rather than by screening.”" There are very few methods of screening for cancer - and where these are available and established, refusal/failure to respond is common. Symptoms in early cancer are often absent or so vague that if *all* patients were referred, the cost to the NHS under PBR would mean that there would be no - rather than inadequate - funding for primary care!
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Comment on: Ian Dalton's swine flu update - a whole-system approach
As a GP, I would find it useful if the priority groups didn't keep being tweaked: trying to identify new - and younger - groups is time-consuming and risks vaccine being wasted because individual patients available for vaccine are not on the list - and the nurse who mixed up that vial is not able to stick around until a sufficient number of patients in the priority groups appear to use the excessive doses of a scarce vaccine! The vaccine campaign *may* be due to central planning: it just doesn't seem like it in the front line!
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Comment on: Trusts target staff sickness to save money
Two questions:- "Increments, worth around 3.2 per cent of salaries, are paid on top of the “headline” pay rise for Agenda for Change staff, which amounted to 2.4 per cent in 2009-10." Does this mean that staff under Agenda for Change received an average of 6.8% increase in 2009-10? (I don't believe it - but it is what the article says!) - how inflexible ar the job roles and management policies in the acute sector? I'm a GP, and my experience is that many patients who ask for a sick-note have very good reasons for wanting to be at work - but the job or employee makes this impossible. Take a small business such as a garage: most of the employees multi-task, and if someone has a sprained ankle or bad back, they can be put to deal with spare parts or office work. A fireman - if the staff supplying control functions cannot be deployed to the front line - has to be off for public safety reasons if he is unable to carry heavy equipment/victims up and down 100 foot ladders safely. I suspect the same applies in most areas of the NHS. My patients working in the NHS seem to find their employers unsympathetic to requests for short-term changes in role to accomodate health problems. Is this true?
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Comment on: DH and unions thrash out deal on transfer of NHS staff pensions
GP social enterprises have found themselves in a trap: individuals employed by the NHS who transferred to the social enterprise organisation have their NHS pensions protected: new entrants/employees have no such entitlement, and future employees who have built up an NHS pension entitlement are also not eligible to stay in the NHS scheme. The GP social enterprises look to be about to die a slow death: is this a "level playing-field" if private, profit-making, companies are given the facility to access NHS pensions - at NHS expense, one assumes, - while non-profit social enterprises are not?
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Comment on: King’s Fund names chief executive
Clive, A quick check didn't reveal anyone outside this magic circle of advisers and former advisers. Did you identify any?
