The Medical Council has flicked the lights and called last orders. Doctors – GPs specifically – have less than a month to volunteer for the Council’s Professional Practice Review (PPR) pilot.
The Council had high hopes for the pilot, but the interest among GPs has been low. Very low. When the pilot was launched, there was talk of capping involvement at 400. Now the Council is admitting (to be fair, they never tried to conceal the fact) that they are probably not going to reach 200 – which is the minimum number that must be reached for the results to achieve stastical significance. That’s not my opinion. That’s according to the Council.
This pilot, as important as it may be (and make no mistake – it’s important), was always doomed by the reaction (outrage, in some cases) of the profession to a call for help by the very Council who oversaw the introduction of a lay majority and political intervention.
Yet, the pilot is Dr Colm Quigley’s baby, and nobody on the Council was more clamorous about the risk of losing professional independence and majority. From where I’m sitting, his call to get doctors involved in the formation of a major new programme ought to be seen as empowering the profession, not further emasculating it.
Nobody seems to want to bite on that kind of rhetorical bait.
Next year, when mandatory peer review hits GPs across the country, GPs will no doubt complain (I mean, this is Ireland, of course they’re going to complain) that the process is tedious and inflexible. It’s just too bad they’re not involved now, when the Council is listening to critcism.
About Greg Baxter
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