Underinvestment threatens safe care, says GP leader

Disinvestment in general practice by successive governments has drastically hampered doctors’ ability to provide safe care, BMA GPs committee chair Chaand Nagpaul has warned MPs. Dr Nagpaul (pictured) made the warning during a hearing of the Commons health select committee on 15 December into primary care, pointing out that GP numbers, as a proportion of NHS doctors, has consistently fallen over recent years.   He said: ‘What I find extraordinary is how well GPs are managing to continue to acquire services in the face of what seems to be an impossible task.’ Dr Nagpaul, who was joined at Tuesday’s hearing by Royal College of GPs council chair Maureen Baker, and Care Quality Commission chief inspector of general practice Steve Field, also questioned the value of practice inspection ratings. He said that the system of aggregate ratings was too simplistic and risked masking aspects of good and bad performance in individual practices. He said: ‘Just ranking them [surgeries] without understanding the context, I think, doesn’t help. ‘There is a real vacuum of proper data, of proper information, information that should not be just aggregated and lumped together in simplistic terms.’ Both Dr Nagpaul and Dr Baker highlighted that underinvestment in general practice, tied in with increasing patient demand and a reducing workforce, meant most doctors were unable to provide the quality of care needed in the 10-minute consultation timef...
Source: BMA News - Category: UK Health Source Type: news