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Michael Golding |
Camidoc – a service run for patient care, not for profit
12 years on, the doctors involved in Camidoc remain committed to remaining on call for the people of Camden, writes chief-executive Michael Golding
CAMIDOC will be celebrating its 12th anniversary on May 1, which provides an opportunity for reflecting on how far we have come and looking to the future.
The name Camidoc is an abbreviation of Camden and Islington Doctors-on-call, and while we now cover a much larger area, it emphasises our roots as a Camden-based organisation.
Camidoc was set up by local GPs and continues to be a not-for-profit organisation operating as a co-operative.
The organisation has since become more complex in the scale and scope of the services that it is able to provide.
The out-of-hours service alone covers approximately one million patients and involves more than 130,000 patient contacts each year.
When you include the District Nurse Messaging and other services, our call handlers are answering more than 200,000 calls every year.
Despite this growth we have remained true to our fundamental belief in the value and flexibility that social enterprise organisations can deliver for the NHS.
Our relationship with the managers and clinicians at Camden Primary Care Trust (PCT) has always been a good one, and goes back to a time before the PCT even existed.
When their chief executive, Rob Larkman, ran the community trust he gave us our first home, on the St Pancras Hospital site, which we still use as our main base.
They have continued to support us as the organisation has developed, and we have provided them with additional services as they have been needed.
In recent years we have also worked very closely with Camden PCT on the development of a strategy for the delivery of urgent primary care and we remain fully committed to innovative service developments in this area.
Camidoc’s belief in partnerships extends beyond the PCT as we work very closely with all of the GP practices in the area, with local hospitals – particularly the Royal Free Hospital where we have had a clinic for several years – and with community nursing services.
Service development is different from commissioning and we recognise that the commissioners at Camden PCT must be able to reassure the Department of Health and the public that they are getting the highest possible quality of care at the best value.
The biggest challenge facing the commissioners is that they need to develop a new model for urgent care at a time of great change.
Lord Darzi’s review and the findings from the Department of Health “Healthcare for London” consultation will be out soon, and both will have something to say about the shape of urgent care services.
Many people will have heard about polyclinics and urgent care centres, and extending the opening hours of GP services.
I believe that further work needs to be done to clarify the detail about how these various initiatives can be implemented locally and how they link with existing services.
Naturally we will continue working closely with our PCT colleagues to ensure that a comprehensive model for urgent care can be provided for Camden residents.
We are not afraid of competition and if we need to go through a competitive tender to ensure that we are allowed to continue to provide services for the people of Camden then, of course, we will.
All I would ask is that we are allowed to compete on a level playing field and that the PCT resist any ideological drive from above to bring in big private sector providers.
My own belief is that services staffed by local clinical and non-clinical staff should actually be given preference, as their knowledge of the communities they serve is invaluable in ensuring that the needs of the diverse population of Camden are properly met. There is always a cost to change and it is not always measured in money.
Camidoc has always achieved high levels of patient satisfaction for the services we provide.
However, I have been overwhelmed, and humbled, by the support that we have received from the people of Camden.
It is very encouraging to know that there are a lot of people who recognise the value of local services being provided by staff and clinicians who are embedded within the community that they serve and whose overarching commitment is to patients not profit.
We will do all we can to ensure that we continue to provide a high quality service for all of the population of the borough where we first began. Camidoc: from Camden, for Camden, not for profit.
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