General practice faces spiralling crisis, study shows

General practice needs more investment, practical support to improve ways of working and a better understanding of what is driving increased demand — or the service could collapse. Research from the King’s Fund exposes the spiralling crisis in primary care with the number of consultations having increased by 15 per cent over the past five years. The size of the workforce has not met the increased demand, rising by just 5 per cent in the same time period, with doctors retiring earlier and in greater numbers and just one in 10 trainee GPs seeing themselves working in primary care full time five years from now. The findings come just two weeks after NHS England announced plans to tackle the mounting crises of workforce, investment and workload facing GPs. A host of BMA recommendations have been included in the ‘support package’, which will see an injection of £2.4bn a year into general practice by 2020-21 — equivalent to a 14 per cent real-terms increase.   Urgent need BMA GPs committee chair Chaand Nagpaul (pictured) said the study showed that the investment was needed urgently. He added: ‘This well-researched report provides more tangible evidence of the scale of the increase in GP workload, which has totally outstripped GP services’ capacity to deliver effective patient care.   'It reinforces the BMA’s Urgent Prescription campaign calling for action to address the crisis in general practice. 'While patient de...
Source: BMA News - Category: UK Health Source Type: news