NHS already doing ‘more for less’, insists leading GP Dr Clare Gerada

The NHS is already doing “more for less”, the country’s top GP said yesterday, after Britain’s leading doctor said that the health service could learn about efficiency from high street computer shops.

Dr Clare Gerada, chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners, said that the NHS was already providing “a very cheap health service in comparison to many countries”, but agreed that, with the NHS budget under pressure like never before, a public consultation on what services it could afford to offer was required.

Sir Bruce Keogh, the medical director of the NHS, told The Independent this week that the health service needed to alter an “in-built mindset that better quality costs more” and could learn from shops like PC World, where customers expected ever-improving technology at ever-decreasing prices.

Dr Gerada said: “We already have a very cheap health service in comparison to many countries, with as good, if not better, health outcomes... Clinically there are ways we could probably deliver more... at more or less the same price.”