Sick certification

The GP bloggers are getting angry about the failure of hospital doctors to issue certificates. They write: This is NOT a rant against my colleagues in secondary care and claim we are ignorant or they imply we are lazy. So which is it? Dr Grumble thinks it is simply because we are provided with the wrong form. Here is the one some of us have been using. It only covers the hospital stay.





Here's a quote from the document linked to below:

Until now the Med 3 statement has been used very rarely in Trusts and in the whole of the NHS generally. There is widespread use of the Med 10.

As far back as 2001, Trusts were required to integrate a simple sickness certification procedure into the hospital discharge and out patient process. The reason was so that hospital doctors and consultants would not refer patients to a GP solely for the purpose of obtaining a sick certificate. At that time, it was estimated that 518,000 appointments per year could be saved for GPs plus 42,000 hours. Also, it would ensure a seamless service for patients upon discharge.

Issue date: September 06
[So it has only taken them five years.]

The problem is clear. It's not much to do with laziness. Filling in one form is much the same as filling in another. It makes no odds to Dr Grumble. But in the Trust where Grumble works there are, say, over 1000 inpatients and over 50 wards on more than one site. Getting the right pieces of paper to all these places is a challenge. This is a management failing. It needs a management solution. And it can be done. Filling in forms is a shocking waste of a GP's time and it won't take us any longer. We just need the right piece of paper. That's all.