Tickled

CDO Barry Cockcroft on 24th March introduced a briefing on guidelines for recall intervals.

http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Publicationsandstatistics/Lettersandcirculars/Dearcolleagueletters/DH_125456

His letter states that this "has been produced by the recall reference group, chaired by Professor Martin Tickle"? Now I know Professor Tickle to be well respected, but who were the other people. They are not listed in the document. I tried Googling "recall reference group" but this resulted in no further information.

The report refers to a study by NHS Manchester where it was found that the needs of new patients were not significantly different to existing caseload. This sounds intuitively wrong.The link provided takes you to a page of various studies so I assume that it is the (unauthored) one referring to Manchester. Best to take a look and draw your own conclusions.

http://www.pcc.nhs.uk/dap-communications-case-studies

There is a later link which claims to support the use of greater skill mix. Again, this report is unauthored. Why do DH see it fit to provide us with "evidence" which appears to be anonymous. I am sure that skill mix is relevant in many situations, but supplying us with unauthored reports adds nothing. Despite Barry's emphasis on us looking at the links I gave up when I clicked the next one and it just took me to the list of references again.

It appears common sense to link recall intervals with risk in some way. But please can we have some science, and please can we have it presented accountably and transparently.