GP surgery meltdown

GP surgeries form the cornerstone of the NHS patient experience, with 1.4m consultations carried out each day. In fact, 90 per cent of patient contact within the health service is managed by general practice.

But the GP workforce is undergoing a shocking crisis of shrinking workforce numbers which could see almost 600 surgeries close within the next year. The Royal College of General Practitioners has identified 543 surgeries where 90 per cent of GPs are over the age of 60, the average GP retirement age being 59. This trend has been further exacerbated by shrinking numbers of medical graduates choosing to enter general practice training.

The RGCP called the situation “desperate,” and further estimated that 1,000 GPs would leave the profession by 2022. The North West and North East regions, which are the most under-doctored areas in the country, having only about 63.5 GPs per 100,000 people, will be particularly hard hit by the GP crisis.

A severely under-invested general practice service has resulted in mounting pressure on GPs.

“GPs and GP practices are under enormous strain as more services are moved out of hospitals and general practice gets a smaller share of the NHS real terms reduction in the overall budget,” said Unite medical practitioners president Dr Ron Singer.

“GPs try to provide good service to patients but the increased workload and lack of money and support has forced practices to close and GPs to retire,” Singer added.

The crisis occurs amid outrageously implausible promises from the Tory party of offering every patient access to a GP seven days a week by 2020. Cameron’s pledge, announced this week, is yet another example of the Tories’ shameless pandering with impossible pie-in-the-sky policies. This particular promise would cost £400m over the next five years, a sum that will be hard to come by, given the £7.2bn Cameron promised in tax cuts to the wealthy.

The reality is that extending GP surgery opening times is nothing but a political gimmick, one that Cameron has tried before.  Just last year, he revealed a similar scheme that was to help 7.5m patients see their GPs seven days a week. In the end, the £50m scheme was an abject failure  – the daily 8am to 8pm opening times that Cameron promised were begun in only two of the seven pilot areas.

Singer said, “Warm words from badly informed politicians are not needed; urgent action is required to restore general practice back to a service we can all be proud of.”

This urgent action Singer calls for was widely discussed at the Royal College of General Practitioners national conference on Thursday (October 2).

Comparing general practice to dam walls that prevent the rest of the NHS from being flooded, RGCP chair Dr. Maureen Baker said in her speech, “So far much of the damage to the dam wall has been hidden from the public – they see the flooding downstream in accident and emergency departments and in hospital pressures, but they haven’t been aware that GPs, nurses and practice teams have been absorbing that pressure by trying to do more and more with less and less.”