In the good old days, GPs were the centre of patient healthcare and we occasionally sought advice from “consultants”.

A lot has changed since then, but it hasn’t always been in patients’ best interests — nor ours.

When I was a young rural GP, there was one physician, one dermatologist and a couple of orthopods down the road at the base hospital, 150km away.

To be clear, gastroenterologists didn’t exist then, and the only thing we had for assessing rectal bleeding was the “Silver Stallion”.