In a major report on the future of GPs, the UK’s Health and Social Care Committee has strongly urged a cap on surgery sizes, not only to relieve pressure on doctors, but also so that patients don’t see a different GP on each visit, saying GP-patient relationships should be from the “cradle to grave”, and that “seeing your doctor should not be like booking an Uber driver”.
They want the government and NHS England to abolish “micromanagement” frameworks measuring too many targets which, they say, risk turning patients into numbers, suggesting a focus on limiting patient number on a GP’s list to 2 500, for example, and slowly reducing to a figure of around 1 850 over five years as more GPs are recruited as planned.
Doctors are working harder, facing more burnout and are demoralised, said the report. More than 40% of GPs and GP trainees said they were likely to leave general practice in the next five years, in a survey conducted by the Royal College of GPs (RCGP).
The report said: “Seeing your GP should not be like phoning a call centre or booking an Uber driver who you will never see again: relationship-based care is essential for patient safety and patient experience. General practice really should be the jewel in the crown of the NHS, one of the services most valued by its patients.
“For doctors it should allow a cradle to grave relationship with patients not possible for other specialties but, for many, infinitely more rewarding.”
The MPs believe “general practice is in crisis” and urged the government and NHSE to acknowledge this and to take “bolder” action to address it, reports Daily Mail.
The report, which received evidence from hundreds of GPs, charities and other health specialists, emphasised that the root cause of the crisis is that there are not enough GPs to meet the ever-increasing demands on the service.
In May, there were an estimated 27.5m appointments in general practice, more than 2m more than in 2019 before the pandemic, according to NHS Digital data included in the report.
Yet over the same period, the number of qualified full-time equivalent GPs working in the NHS declined by nearly 500 from 28 094 to 27 627.
The latest findings come as a report published by the General Medical Council warned of the “precarious” situation of the NHS’ “reliance” on international medical graduates (IMGs).
The number of IMGs had increased by 40% in the past five years while the number of UK graduates in the workforce increased by 10%.
In the report, Dr Margaret Ikpoh, vice-chair for professional development for the RCGP, said that 47% of GP trainees are from the international community. In places such as Hull and Grimsby, up to 70% are international.
“Ultimately we are putting trainees, who are not particularly familiar with the … NHS, into a system already under-doctored and stressed and which perhaps does not have the capacity or the premises to provide the training that they need to become partners,” she said.
Health Secretary Therese Coffey’s Plan for Patients last month pledged to introduce a two-week wait target for GP appointments.
But the report said that it “does not address the fundamental capacity problem causing poor GP access”. The NHS’ national director for primary care Dr Amanda Doyle said the two-week expectation was “reasonable” but GPs “just can’t deliver it” due to staff shortages.
NHS reportWorkforce-report-2022---full-report_pdf-94540077
Daily Mail article – Seeing your doctor should not be like booking an Uber driver, MPs say: New report demands a cap on surgery list sizes so patients don't see a different GP every time (Open access)
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