4. Dr Arvind Madan

This London GP is tasked with saving the whole profession from his desk in NHS England’s Skipton House – not a job for the faint hearted.

As chair of the GP Forward View oversight committee, Dr Madan is responsible for ensuring that the £2.4bn plan delivers real change. Of course, he has to wade through treacle at NHS England to achieve it and many GPs may question quite what he has achieved in the past year.

But Dr Madan told us that he was ‘cautiously optimistic’ earlier this year about the progress he is making and that, for him, a highlight of the 12 months was when he received ‘reports of real practices being saved from closing’ because of the £27m practice resilience programme.

He adds: ‘While I wouldn’t allow that to make us complacent, especially with two practices closing a week, we don’t hear enough about these examples of turnaround and how they provide hope for others.’

In the year ahead, the top priority will be sorting out a short-term as well as a long-term solution to rocketing GP indemnity costs, while Dr Madan is also tasked with overseeing the scheme to boost the workforce with 2,000 GPs from overseas.

At the same time, he continues to be a partner at the Hurley Group in London, working as a GP one day a week and one in six weekends, so he is not immune to some of the troubles that are being experienced by other practices: one of his surgeries was rated ‘inadequate’ by the CQC and recently placed in special measures.

Although the stakes are high, a lot of this vital work takes place behind the scenes, and Dr Madan recently told Pulse of his frustration at the difficulty of getting the message across to grassroots GPs that this work is very much ongoing, and that significant progress is being made.

Why influential

Responsible for delivering the GP Forward View in England

What others say

‘He is doing the right thing for all the right reasons’

Random fact

He is a GPSI in substance misuse