Could 'good egg' Jeremy Hunt be the saviour of the NHS?

Could 'good egg' Jeremy Hunt be the saviour of the NHS? The health secretary seems to think like a patient and gets down to the nitty gritty by working in hospitals

I have come to the conclusion that the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, is a good egg. As a long-term NHS customer, he does seem to think like a patient. What's more, he has two of the same bees buzzing in his bonnet as I have: that GPs should take back oversight of out-of-hours care, and that the lack of effective IT in the NHS is a disgrace.

But, first, there are his visits to GP surgeries and hospital wards. These are not just lordly ministerial visits. He gets down to the nitty gritty of prescribing the exact amount of medication for a diabetic patient. He gets the bad news about the stresses of doctors' lives. He was told first hand how GPs resent having to ask all patients irrelevant questions laid down by the Department of Health. It is not only Hunt himself who visits the sharp end. He gets his mandarins to spend four weeks a year on the front line, emptying bedpans if required.

This is wholly revolutionary, aimed at reducing the gap between Whitehall civil servants and the nurses on the wards. No other minister has ever done this.

This does not make the doctors like him any better. In fact, I have a sneaking suspicion that they think he has no business on the wards, and he might get to know too much and find the skeletons in their cupboards. Hence their hostility, which resulted in the BMA giving him a vote of no confidence at a recent LMC conference. Hunt, in an interview in The House Magazine, wryly points out that the BMA also passed votes of no confidence in Patricia Hewitt, Alan Milburn and Andrew Lansley. "I am afraid I am not alone in the club." He also got a lot of stick from GPs for having the temerity to ask for the return of the responsibility of out-of-hours service to GPs. I suspect that, rather like me, he was shocked to find that in 2004, the GPs had traded that responsibility for gold, £6,000 to be precise.

Thereby, they gave up the GPs' historic 24/7 care for their patients, on which we, the patients, in an ever more confusing healthcare world, absolutely rely.

Jeremy Hunt grumbled that because patients would not know their out-of-hours doctors, they would opt to go to A&E instead. I have anecdotal evidence from my contemporaries, that this happens. But the doctors chose to respond that Hunt was carrying out a personal vendetta against them, and blaming them for the long waits in A&E.

A survey by Pulse found that 85.6% of GPs said they would not take back responsibility for out-of-hours care and 61.9% would take industrial action if forced to do so.

When, on 11 June, I, like Jeremy Hunt, called for a return to the continuity of care that I had been used to before 2004, I got a lot of abuse (and a few courteous replies) from doctors, like "uninformed dross" and "ignoramus", despite the fact that I was saying that I love my GP practice so much that I want them to be responsible for me 24/7.

I am glad that since the end of June, attitudes seem to be changing. Many doctors have come out of the woodwork, who have been providing out-of-hours services in one form or another for years. I have even seen claims that 40% of out-of-hours work is currently provided by GPs.

I get the feeling that in the last week or so, doctors generally are beginning to realise that I and Jeremy Hunt may be right, however noisily their leaders may huff and puff. Some seem secretly rather chuffed that patients like me value their 24/7 service so highly, and are devising ways of making a return to the old ways possible. I believe that Hunt's challenge has been largely responsible for this change of heart. Hunt is indeed a good egg. Guardian Professional.