Any death that may in any way have been preventable should be thoroughly investigated, system failures identified and changed and if necessary people who were found to be lacking personally or professionally held to account. Yesterday it was reported that the death of Penny Campbell, which occurred over an Easter weekend, happened despite being seen by or speaking over the phone to 8 GPs from the Camidoc GP Co-operative. Much has been written about many aspects of government policy that in people’s opinion is harmful or just downright wrong and indeed I have heard people on the TV news speak of the government ultimately being responsible for the death of Penny Campbell. But is that really the case? Why haven’t the UK doctors of the blog world been discussing this case as they surely would have if any kind of nurse co-operative had been involved.
The system of out of hours care in this country is a mess. When responsibility for it was handed to PCTs they were ill equipped to take on the role, but in the mean time some good services have grown up, many of them run by GP cooperatives, though you do hear of some stories about doctors flying over for a bit of weekend work for the most amazing sums of money. Camidoc though reports on its website that it has been running since 1996 and that it has 300 GPs in its co-operative. It says that some nurses are now being employed but that previously the service was run by GPs.
The report into the death of Penny Campbell criticised the systems and processes of Camidoc and the way in which the local PCTs monitored those systems. But who created the system that meant that each call to the service was treated as a separate episode of care. The department of health perhaps could do more to make sure patients notes are available to the out of hours service (I am no expert on this but perhaps that is the reason behind connecting for health), but at the same time why does one out of hours provider not have a system for highlighting that a person hasn’t been seen or spoken to before? Gordon Brown appears to accept that changes need to be made to the way out of hours care takes place, but in this instance I am not sure that the department of health / government can be expected to take full responsibility for this failing. I would welcome the comments of GPs in this matter, because I am wondering where the professional voice is in relation to this issue. Am I being a cynic here?
By the way, I am writing about this topic without a great deal of knowledge, it not being my area of specialism (if I currently have one) so am happy for any information which tells me that my opinion is wide of the mark on this one!
