Michael Dixon (doctor)

Michael Dixon OBE, MA, FRCGP has been chair of the NHS Alliance^[1] since 1998. He also chairs the College of Medicine, is a visiting professor at the University of Westminster and president of the Health Writers Guild.^[2] He is a general practitioner in Cullompton, Devon where he has practised since 1989.

NHS Alliance Conference 2007

Career

Current national appointments include membership of the National Leadership Network for Health and Social Care, the National Stakeholder Forum and National Steering Group for GP Commissioning. He is an Honorary Senior Fellow in Public Policy at HSMC University of Birmingham,^[3] Honorary Senior /Lecturer in Integrated Health at the Peninsula Medical School and sits on the Steering Group of the King’s Fund Enquiry on General Practice.^[4]

He has been active in the commissioning movement since the early 1990s, when he co-founded the Mid Devon Family Doctors Commissioning Group. Since then he has campaigned for the right of GPs and practices to have a role in improving local health and services and been a prime mover in developing GP commissioning models that will allow them to do so. He sat on the National Executive of the National Association of Commissioning GPs (NACGP) - founded in 1993, was a co-writer of its document “Restoring the Vision” (1997), which was commissioned by the then Minister of Health, Alan Milburn.^[5] When NACGP became NHS Alliance in 1998, he was elected Chairman and has continued in this role by annual election to the present. He is a frequent speaker and national advisor on GP commissioning and co-author of a number of books and chapters in this area (e.g. The Locality Commissioning Handbook ^[6](1998, Radcliffe Press) and A Practical Guide to Primary Care Groups and Trusts (2001) Radcliffe Press).^[7]

He is currently a director of the College of Medicine.^[8]

Alternative medicine

His other main field of interest is complementary medicine. Co-author of The Human Effect (Radcliffe Press 2000), he believes in “patient centred medicine” and the role of the patient in self healing. He was the medical director of The Prince's Foundation for Integrated Health, which closed in 2010 after its finance director was arrested for stealing £253,000 from the organisation.^[9] Dixon is a director of the College of Medicine which opened in 2010.^[10][11] He has been criticised by professor of complementary medicine and alternative medicine campaigner Edzard Ernst for advocating the use of complementary medicine. Ernst said that the stance of the NHS Alliance on complementary medicine was "misleading to the degree of being irresponsible."^[12]

Publications

• The Locality Commissioning Handbook (Radcliffe Press 1997),
• The Human Effect (Radcliffe Press 2000)
• A Practical Guide to Primary Care Groups and Trusts (Radcliffe Press 2000)
• Practice-based Commissioning: From good idea to effective practice 2007
• Co-author of many NHS Alliance documents including Restoring the Vision (1997) and Implementing the Vision (2000). As a Fellow of Exeter University, he had written a number of research papers on complementary medicine and the therapeutic relationship.

Personal life

Michael Dixon is married to a professional artist, Joanna and they have three children.

References