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The trouble with health checks

Concerns have been raised about the huge workloads that will be placed on doctors’ surgeries if the Government’s plans to offer health checks to everyone aged between 40 and 74 go ahead.

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Home » News » Issue 5 June 2008

The trouble with health checks

The trouble with health checks

Concerns have been raised about the huge workloads that will be placed on doctors’ surgeries if the Government’s plans to offer health checks to everyone aged between 40 and 74 go ahead.

The Government believes that the scheme to identify those who are vulnerable to vascular diseases could prevent up to 9,500 heart attacks and save 2,000 lives every year. However, the British Medical Association says that surgeries do not have the capacity to deal with such huge numbers of patients and warns that it could lead to healthy people being seen by doctors at the expense of the sick.

Laurence Buckman, Chairman of the BMA’s GP Committee, said: “While we would like to welcome this, as prevention is undoubtedly better than cure, we have serious concerns about the pressure this will put on an already overstretched general practice.

“Over a third of the population fall into this age range, which for an average practice means 2,000 patients. It could work out at an extra 40 appointments a week – and that’s if they only need one appointment.

“Whether it is nurses, GPs, healthcare assistants or pharmacists who do these checks, there is not currently the workforce, the time in the day or even the space in our surgeries to carry out this number of consultations.”

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