Helen Salisbury: Getting the best out of general practice

Abstract

What would a more productive general practice look like? Of course, it’s hard to measure productivity when your job is mostly about preventing things from happening. If you’re a surgeon, you can count the number of operations completed (although variations in complexity will mean that a simple number isn’t an accurate reflection of the work done)—but if most of your role is to keep people well and out of hospital, it’s harder to show that you’re doing a good job. The stroke that didn’t happen because blood pressure was successfully controlled, or the mental health crisis averted by timely intervention, remains invisible and …