BMA defends GPs in wake of Healthcare Commission report

The British Medical Association (BMA) has defended the work of GPs following a Healthcare Commission report highlighting concerns with the diagnosis of heart disease in Britain.

In the Healthcare Commission’s annual State of Healthcare report, worries were raised that GPs were failing to diagnose patients and were not collecting all the appropriate data.

Laurence Buckman, chairman of the BMA’s GP committee, indicated that it was “unfair” to blame GPs for fewer diagnoses of heart disease as it was the responsibility of health professionals across the NHS to diagnose the condition.

“The current scientific evidence also says that heart disease needs to be diagnosed with the use of an echocardiogram and that needs to be done in hospital,” he said.

He went on to suggest that the GP’s job was to assess what the best care was for patients “in front of them”, so if a person was of normal weight then it may not be appropriate to determine their body mass index (BMI) if they come in with an entirely different problem.

Mr Buckman said that for patients who may be at risk of developing coronary disease, giving them help and advice was more important then putting them on a register for the primary care organisation.

“That is what is of real benefit to patients in the long run,” he confirmed.

The report also found that nine in ten of the 80,000 hospital patients surveyed were happy with their care.