'Cottage industry' GP model broken, says health minister

THE current “cottage industry” model of GPs is “largely broken”, a health minister has said.

Lord Prior of Brampton said he expected a “huge consolidation” of GP practices over the next decade.

His damning comments came after Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, announced a recruitment drive to secure a 10 per cent increase in GPs last week, to try to deliver a seven-day service.

Lord Prior said: “The model we have been working with in this country since 1948 is largely broken. We have to deliver more care through vertically integrated units of care, if you like, not just independent hospitals.

“I think we will see over the next five to 10 years a huge consolidation of primary care and the old cottage industry model of general practice is probably broken.”

He said the Five Year Forward View produced by NHS chief executive Simon Stevens last year “recognises that”, and the Government had committed £8 billion to putting his plan into practice.

Lord Prior, a former chairman of the Care Quality Commission who was appointed a health minister following the general election, made his comments at question time in the House of Lords.

Labour peer Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top had pointed to the number of times her GP’s surgery in a small former mining town in the North East was due to be closed over the next month.

“Is it not true that the model is broken and that young doctors coming in to GP practice do not want to be partners and have the responsibility of running a small business as well?” she asked.

“Isn’t it actually, when you look at what’s going on in areas where health outcomes are poorer, urgent that the Government pays more serious attention to this?” Labour peer Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall asked Lord Prior: “What incentives are you going to be able to offer to young medical students beginning their training to encourage them to go into general practice?

“It is fine to say we are going to train 5,000 more doctors. You can’t force them into general practice if they don’t want to go.”

Lord Prior said it was crucial to persuade young doctors that there was a “good long-term career in general practice”. “If you run the clock forward five years there is no doubt at all in my mind that more care will be delivered in primary care and in the community relatively than in acute hospitals.”

He said Mr Hunt had announced the first steps of a “new deal for general practice”.