This headline makes us laugh.
In all our years of studying these things, we’ve not come across an organisation that’s done less for “consumer experience in healthcare” in the last 10 years than Primary Health Care Limited, let alone done anything to improve it.
Our first experience with Primary was when a fairly mild letter of complaint was sent by email to Dr Ed Bateman, Primary’s founder and first CEO, some 7 or 8 years ago, about an experience with one of his doctors – his response! he told the complainant to “p__s off, as the matters being complained of were not matters that people usually complained of, AND, although the complainant was not told of this, orders were given that if ever he visited a Primary Centre again, he was to be “ejected from the premises, with the Police being called if necessary.” Heil Hitler!
We could go on. See our two previous posts on Primary.
In 2015, Peter Gregg became the new CEO, after Ed Batemans’s death – and now Malcolm Parmenter. Poor bloke! I don’t think he knows what he’s in for.
Is anything going to change?
If he starts trying to “improve consumer experience” for those who go to Primary centres, it will be “disruption” alright!
We’re reminded of a quotation from Steve Jobs:-
We can’t imagine that many people within the Primary organisation would be “used to an environment where excellence is expected.”
But then it’s probably been a waste of our time putting this post together – we’re going to continue avoiding anything to do with Primary like the plague, forever, and we can’t imagine that many of the people that read blogs like this are Primary fans.
P.S: To be fair, perhaps some of the things this article says that Mr Parmenter has said make sense, like perhaps this:-
There are only three things wrong with it:-
Firstly, We can’t imagine Primary ever doing this sort of thing.
Secondly, we believe there are other practices doing this and more.
Thirdly, telephone consultations are useless compared with getting advice by email.