Seeing a GP must not be like booking an Uber, warn MPs
SEEING your GP should not be like booking an Uber driver who you will never see again, MPs have said, as they called for a cap on surgeries’ patient list lengths.
In a major 65-page report into the future of GPs, they said general practices are ‘in crisis’ and urged the Government and NHS England to take ‘bolder’ action to address this.
MPs on the health and social care committee said: ‘Patients are facing unacceptably poor access to, and experiences of, general practice and patient safety is at risk from unsustainable pressures.
‘ Given their reluctance to acknowledge the crisis in general practice we are not convinced that the Government or NHS England are prepared to address the problems in the service with sufficient urgency.’
They said that GP-patient relabut, should be from the ‘cradle to grave’, and suggested a cap on the number of people on surgeries’ books. They want ‘micromanagement’ frameworks measuring too many targets, ‘which risk turning patients into numbers’, to be abolished.
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-tograve relationship with patients not possible for other specialities for many, infinitely more rewarding.’ The MPs recommended the Government considers limiting the number of patients on a GP’s list to 2,500, for example, which would slowly reduce to a figure of around 1,850 over five years as more GPs are recruited as planned.
‘These numbers should reflect varying levels of need in local populations,’ they added. ‘This would draw us closer in line with our European counterparts, and help improve access and continuity.’
The report, which received evidence from hundreds of GPs, charities and other health specialists, emphasised the cause of the crisis was straightforward – there are not enough GPs ‘to meet the everincreasing demands on the service’.
In May there were an estimated 27.5million appointments in general practice, at least two million more than in 2019, 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 from 28,094 to 27,627.
The MPs said that Health Secretary Therese Coffey’s plan to introduce a two-week-wait target for GP appointments ‘ while welltionships intentioned, does not address the fundamental capacity problem causing poor GP access’.
It also emerged yesterday that the NHS’s national director for primary care Dr Amanda Doyle said the two-week expectation was ‘reasonable’ but that GPs ‘ just can’t deliver it’ due to staff shortages.
Professor Martin Marshall, chairman of the Royal College of GPs, said: ‘ The committee’s report acknowledges the importance of GPs and our teams building trusting relationships with patients and delivering continuity of care, something that evidence has shown improves patients’ health outcomes, and has benefits for the NHS.’
An NHS spokesman said: ‘ We have expanded the primary care workforce by 19,000 since 2019... to give family doctors more time to spend with those patients who need them most.’