One in four patients ‘risk losing their family doctor’

UP TO 16 million patients are set to lose their GP by 2030, medics warned yesterday.

The NHS will become a ‘sinking ship’ if ministers fail to stabilise primary care and stem an exodus of staff, according to Doctors Association UK.

The campaign group has written to new Health Secretary Therese Coffey calling for urgent action to boost recruitment and improve care.

It cited research from the Health Foundation that found the NHS could lose 8,800 full-time equivalent GPs by the end of the decade.

With every family doctor looking after approximately 2,000 patients, this would leave around one in four people without help.

It means more patients will be forced to pay for private appointments or risk becoming so sick they end up in A&E. The warning comes as ambulances are forced to queue to drop off patients at overcrowded emergency departments, leaving them unable to respond to new 999 calls.

The letter says: ‘Without urgent government action, our primary care system will suffer irreversible loss as the risk of harm to both patients and doctors increases. Without your urgent action to stabilise primary care, the NHS will become a sinking ship.

‘GPs will cut their hours, quit the NHS or quit the country. This is happening already. Most concerningly, Britain’s most deprived areas, which already struggle to recruit GPs and tend to have a much higher patient to GP ratio will suffer the most.’

The letter calls for Miss Coffey to extend self-certification of sickness to 28 days and give pharmacists the power to swap medicines to a suitable alternative when out of stock. It also wants GPs to be paid for each appointment they offer, rather than a fixed annual sum per patient. The doctors also want more continuity of care, which means patients generally see the same GP each time.

Lizzie Toberty, GP spokesman at the Doctors Association, said: ‘We are hurtling rapidly towards the end of the NHS as we know it, where those who can, pay – and those who can’t, suffer.

‘And just like in dentistry, there is evidence of a rapidly expanding private GP sector. For those who cannot pay, my worry is they will die young of entirely preventable diseases. We are about to see health inequalities get a whole lot wider.’

Professor Martin Marshall, chairman of the Royal College of GPs, said: ‘GPs are burning out and facing difficult decisions about continuing working in the NHS for the sake of patient safety and their own wellbeing.’