GPs respond to Blair's challenges

GPs have welcomed the extra resources which the government has put into the NHS (1 April, p 889) and say that they will work with the government to get the maximum benefit from the money.

In the General Practitioners Committee's initial response to the prime minister's five challenges for the NHS (1 April, p 889) the GPC's chairman, Dr John Chisholm, says, “GPs will deliver a shared quality agenda if we are allowed to work with government to develop that agenda and are given the resources to improve the way we are able to work.”

He said that GPs wanted to help eliminate unacceptable variability in the delivery of care, but full funding was needed for evidence based prescribing, particularly in areas such as coronary heart disease, diabetes, and asthma.

Under the partnership challenge, where there is a need to increase the availability of direct access investigations for GPs, the GPC says that this is particularly true in relation to physiotherapists, where delayed access to treatment—for example, for back pain—means that many patients who could have returned to work are converted into chronic …