GPs call for fair share of funding

The BMA has launched an action plan to help general practice cope with ever-increasing demand and shrinking resources. The report, Responsive, safe and sustainable: our urgent prescription for general practice, calls for the Government, NHS England and clinical commissioning groups to provide fair and sustainable funding, lower workloads, an expanded workforce and a reduced role for the CQC (Care Quality Commission). It says primary care should have 11 per cent of NHS spending, returning it to the level it received at the end of the last decade. BMA GPs committee chair Chaand Nagpaul, pictured, said: ‘GPs across the country are calling for urgent and sustained action to resolve the crisis facing general practice and ensure that practices can deliver high-quality and safe patient care. ‘It responds to the state of emergency in general practice resulting from unmanageable workload, insufficient funding, staff shortages, excessive bureaucracy and suffocating regulation from bodies like the CQC.’     'Unsustainable' crisis The report says the gap between demand and capacity is being exacerbated by an ‘unsustainable’ crisis in recruitment and retention, which includes thousands of GP training places not taken up and many doctors nearing retirement age. The report also calls for the NHS to introduce a national standard detailing the maximum number of patients a primary care professional can reasonably deal with in a working day, and for imp...
Source: BMA News - Category: UK Health Source Type: news