Too little, too late?

As all good comrade patients know the Party is all wise and so for years will have been planning centrally via good old 5 year plans to address all NHS deficiencies except their own inepitutude which cannot exist for they are perfect.

So comrades the Party announces another increase in NHS productivity. There must be a multitude of praises be due to Jeremy for delivering the “largest ever” increase in something via this scheme an extra 1500 doctors. However this is not the case. All that glitters is not gold. Study and think about the details.

Only 630 will start basic first year pre clinical medical training this year 2018 which means in say 6 years’ time there will be in in August 2024 less than 630 new doctors due to wastage say 10% a year as new house officers the most junior of doctors now known as foundation doctors (trainees) or F1s. By our maffs that means only possibly 334 new house officers, sorry comrades, F1 doctors will come out of this first new medical school sausage machine.

Assuming that all of these last the course and that they all decide to become GPs with no wastage this will only generate at best 334 new GPs in the year 2029. If you read this article and assume that only 2 in 5 doctors go on to further training with none taking time out and returning later this figure could be as high as 134 at best by 2029 although others may appear later. 

Of course the others in the full cohort will start training in 2019 and 2020 so doing a similar exercise there will if, and this is a very big if, they all became GPs they will come on stream as raw recruits in 2030-31 but nowhere near 1500 new doctors possibly as few as 795 using the above methodology possibly less as we have assumed no wastage during GP training. 

The 1500 are doctors to be not doctors now.

The shortage of doctors has been known about for years indeed decades, the increasing and aging population ditto but only now does part of the TriPartite alliance take some limited action which is merely an atom in the deep ocean of NHS healthcare need. Too little, too late?

Praise be to the Party for at long last realizing there is a problem which it has denied for decades and for taking important action to address the situation and crossing their fingers while doing so. Your new GP may see you in 2029-31 long after a large number of your current GPs have left and Jeremy’s 5000 extra GPs have failed to materialize in 2020.