Circle of change

So, Dougal the doctor, Florence the nurse, and Ermintrude the practice manager scuttled around reorganising everything. They went from general practice fundholding, through primary care trust commissioning, to practice based commissioning. Primary care trusts merged to become what had been known previously as strategic health authorities. Then, in 2008, Zebedee, convinced that giving most of the health budget to primary care was a recipe for inequity, pulled much of it back to be controlled centrally.

The target set by Zebedee in 2005, that anyone who wanted to see a doctor should be able to do so within two days, proved hopeless, making it more difficult for working patients to get appointments rather than easier. So it was scrapped and the status quo restored. In 2009, after several years of huffing and puffing …