Dr Sammad Hashmi, a consultant psychiatrist in Humberside, is in favour of GP consortia. He recently published an article which examined the potential benefits GP they will bring to community mental health care provision.
Dr Hashmi said the NHS has become highly bureaucratic and operates via unnecessarily complex systems of service delivery which amount to “an uneconomical way to transform cash into care”.
At present, mental health services straddle the primary and secondary care systems and are subdivided into various teams. These include the generic community mental health team, the assertive outreach team, early psychosis services and crisis resolution.
Many psychiatrists feel the disjoined interaction between these teams reduces overall effectiveness and to some extent the patient just gets lost in the system.
By allowing consortia to commission just one multi-faceted community mental health team Dr Hashmi believes the new system would “minimise the risk of over-inclusive bureaucracy and communication failure within the multiple team structure.”
Lorna's Larynx 