Dr Mike Bewick is deputy medical director of
NHS England. He is deputy to Sir
Bruce Keogh
Professor Sir Bruce Edward Keogh, KBE, FMedSci, FRCS, FRCP (born 24 November 1954) is a Rhodesian-born British surgeon who specialises in cardiac surgery. He was medical director of the National Health Service in England from 2007 and n ...
. He was formerly a
general practitioner in
Egremont, Cumbria
Egremont is a market town, civil parish and two electoral wards in Cumbria, England, and historically part of Cumberland. It is situated just outside the Lake District National Park, south of Whitehaven and on the River Ehen.
The town, whic ...
.
He was formerly medical director for NHS Cumbria, at the time of the
Cumbrian floods in 2009. According to
Pulse
In medicine, a pulse represents the tactile arterial palpation of the cardiac cycle (heartbeat) by trained fingertips. The pulse may be palpated in any place that allows an artery to be compressed near the surface of the body, such as at the n ...
, who rated him eighth in their list of the 50 most influential figures in general practice in 2014 he has retained his Northern frankness, declaring primary care commissioning ‘a mess’ and that NHS England was ‘almost burying head in the sand’ on the GP workforce crisis.
He says that NHS England would only close a GP practice if it was “at the extremes of immediate public safety”.
He launched a call to action consultation on general practice in 2013, warning that primary care cannot continue in its present form beneath the unsustainable weight of unprecedented social and economic pressures.
He has forecast that the GP partnership model will disappear in a ten years and primary care will be provided by organisations the size of
Clinical Commissioning Group
Clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) were NHS organisations set up by the Health and Social Care Act 2012 to organise the delivery of NHS services in each of their local areas in England. On 1 July 2022 they were abolished and replaced by Integ ...
s.
He subsequently chaired an investigation into shortcomings in the cardiac unit at
St George’s Hospital.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bewick, Mike
British general practitioners
Year of birth missing (living people)
Living people