Strictly Come Dancing meets Casualty in new broadband operation

GPs to face the judges on NHS broadband bulletin board

Being a doctor is a pretty tough job. Not only are you concerned with saving lives and ensuring people’s general wellbeing, there’s also waiting lists, paperwork and untold bureaucracy to deal with. Now, GPs could find themselves under added pressure, after the public are given the chance to “slander or praise” them on a new broadband site.

It’s all the idea of government health minister, Ben Bradshaw, who has cited his intention to make the NHS Choices broadband site a means for patients with broadband access to write comments about their doctor’s surgery.

His objective is to utilise broadband and patient power to improve the primary care medical system in Britain. He hopes GPs will be driven to offer a better service as detrimental broadband reviews could push patients to seek registration at another medical practice. The aim is to invite comments over broadband on reception staff, the availability and speed of receiving an appointment, as well as medical professionals’ bedside manner.

Bradshaw told the Guardian he wants the NHS Choices broadband website to do for healthcare what Amazon has done for the book trade and Trip Adviser for the travel industry: providing positive and negative feedback - warts and all - from consumers on broadband.

The ‘rate or slate’ broadband idea was, perhaps unsurprisingly, met with criticism when presented to the British Medical Association.

Speaking to the Guardian, the chair of the BMA’s GPs committee, Laurence Buckman, said:

“A [broadband] site on which people can slander or praise irresponsibly is the wrong approach. Patients should be able to choose a doctor, but I don't think this is the way to do it. For example, if I don’t give antibiotics for a viral infection because I don’t think it is appropriate, the word will get out that I am a tough git. But making them happy is not what I am there for. I am there to make them healthy.”

Buckman said there would be a temptation for doctors to game the proposed broadband system. “If you want to survive as a GP, you will encourage patients to vote for you. It will be rather like Strictly Come Dancing.”

Despite the complaints of medics, officials have been told to have the appropriate software ready next year. And while GPs may soon find themselves in the firing line of Strictly-style barbed comments from disgruntled judges (aka patients), presumably they won’t have to take part in stuff like this...


Strictly Come Dancing star Rachel Stevens performs a perfect foxtrot.