A short note on this afternoon’s meeting. It was more appreciative than last year’s, with only two critical notes: a lady who had difficulty getting in touch with her GP, and my query about the delay in assessments of cases of delayed transfer of care (crudely known as bed-blocking).

On the subject of access to GPs generally, mention was made of health minister Edwina Hart’s initiative to open GP surgeries into the evening. However, a GP from the body of the hall pointed out that the money provided for this was not new, but taken from other GP programmes.

My question was not answered directly, but it was revealed that there would be work in the next couple of months on an additional kind of facility which would reduce the pressure on acute bed space.

Hanging over all was the uncertainty about the future in the future of the NHS in Wales envisaged by Edwina Hart.

There is a couplet in Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi”: “Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.” I think everyone in the AGM today was already thinking of the possibility of the loss of local public access to primary care administrators which we have enjoyed since 2003.

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