In an article published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, Ailsa McKay, Ravi Parekh and I discuss some of the implications of the imposition of the new junior doctor contract in England's NHS. For doctors, the contract's imposition is distressing for several reasons. First, the contract is incompletely developed, and there are errors in the associated ‘pay calculator’, and heavily criticised, unrealistic rotas have been published. Doctors are therefore unable to determine the hours they are likely to work under the new contract, how these will be distributed across the week, and the impact on their salaries. This uncertainty is compounded by lack of clarity around the government’s rationale for imposition: provision of a ‘seven-day National Health Service’. The government has not clearly defined what it means by this, and the proposed rotas do not redistribute services evenly across the week. Indeed it is unclear whether the new rotas will provide any enhancement of weekend cover. Nor is it known what impact the proposed new working patterns of junior doctors will have on clinical outcomes, mortality and National Health Service productivity.
As part of a session on primary care data in the Health Informatics module on the Imperial Master of Public Health Programme, I asked students to work in two groups to present arguments for and against the NHS Care.Data programme. Care.Data is an NHS programme that will extract data from the medical records held by general practitioners (GPs) in England. The Care.Data programme takes advantage of the very high level of use of electronic medical records by GPs in England. After extraction, data will be uploaded to the NHS Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC). The data will then be used for functions such as health care planning, monitoring disease patterns and research. The programme has been controversial with proponents arguing that the programme will bring many benefits for the NHS and the population of England; and opponents arguing it is a major breach of privacy. You can view the two presentations to help inform you further about these arguments: Arguments fo...
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