Part-time medicine

SIR – You rightly draw attention (report, September 23) to the impact of early retirement on the number of GPs currently in practice.

Another important reason for pressure on general practice is the number of GPs who now work parttime. Though it is not only women doctors who do so, the increase in numbers of women GPs has played a part. Some practices have no fulltime GPs.

The issue for the country is that it costs as much to train a part-time doctor as it does to train one who works full-time, but the growth of part-time practice and career breaks has meant that more staff are now required to cover the same workload. R G Thomas Penarth, Glamorgan SIR – Ninety per cent of patient interactions in the NHS are in general practice, yet GP services receive less than 8 per cent of the budget.

By neglecting to fund the rising number of consultations in primary care, successive governments have starved general practice of resources. The only hope of saving the NHS is to honour the demands of junior doctors, plough sufficient resources into general practice and community services and stop relying on hospitals to care for frail elderly patients as a substitute for providing services to support people in their own homes.

The Government should give clinical commissioning groups an immediate financial boost to allow the focus of care to shift from the hospital to the home. It is what our stoical elderly patients want and deserve.

Such a move would put the NHS and social care on a sustainable footing and lead to less expenditure in the future. Dr David Haines Swanage, Dorset