The new emergency and urgent care plan was ‘a huge missed opportunity’ for GP funding, warned the chair of the General Practitioners’ Committee.
“With practices in England providing 50 million patient contacts each and every month, we cannot work any harder – the Government must create greater capacity to better meet patients’ needs,” Dr Katie Bramall-Stainer said. “The spending review and 10 Year Plan must address this, and properly fund what the population has listed as their number one priority for the NHS and what was promised in Labour’s election manifesto: to ‘bring back the family doctor’. Practices are hanging on by a thread.”
Dr Bramall-Stainer also pointed out a risk that under the new proposals that paramedics may resort to calling GPs and asking duty doctors on-call to take decisions outside their remit in order to avoid hospital admissions.
Last week the government announced £450 million investment in new ambulances and other measures as part of its urgent and emergency care plan. Leaders in general practice are still waiting for the NHS’s 10 Year Plan, due out soon, which they hope will contain a commitment to negotiating a new GP contract.
Dr Richard Fieldhouse, NASGP chair, said: “The future success of Wes Streeting’s new plan lies between a rock and a hard place if it’s not backed by additional funding into primary care needed to cope with the inevitable overspill into general practice.
“GPs are now in a position where we know how collective action has made such a positive impact on our workloads, and it’s never going to go back to the good old bad old days of the never-ending ‘all you can eat’ buffet of care it used to provide. Patients will still be in corridors, just different, possibly less safe corridors.
“We welcome the new funding for colleagues in urgent and emergency care, but we must focus on the more pressing issue of jobs and locum funding for new and experienced GPs which, if not addressed in the next three months, will create a serious and avoidable threat to GP retention.
“If you’ve not already done so, please join the BMA’s campaign to email your local MP.”
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