General practice needs 'contingency planning'

The NHS must prepare emergency plans to prevent general practice collapsing under sudden surges in workload, a conference of representatives from the profession’s local medical committees has agreed. Such emergency plans should become a legal duty for NHS bodies, according to a motion passed at the LMC 2016 conference on Friday. The motion, proposed by Derby and Derbyshire LMC member Peter Holden (pictured), called for the ‘urgent incorporation of contingency planning for large numbers of patients being left without general practice services at very short notice’. Such plans must be grafted into ‘all NHS emergency preparedness and resilience planning’, the motion added. Dr Holden said general practice collapse should be on the ‘national risk register’, established by the Civil Contingencies Act 2004. This act creates official duties to prepare for events which ‘threaten serious damage to human welfare’, according to the act’s explanatory notes.   Care compromised Dr Holden added that the conference had heard from ‘capable, intelligent, motivated’ GPs, who were ‘no longer able to cope’. ‘As responsible professionals it is a duty to draw the attention of the authorities to those situations where patient care maybe compromised,’ he said. ‘GPs are falling over now. Bluntly, without general practice, [emergency care] would be swamped within two hours to two days at the most...
Source: BMA News - Category: UK Health Source Type: news