Only one in four GPS working full-time

JUST one in four GPS in England is now working full-time, a drop from one in three in five years, official figures show.

It follows research showing most GPS now work three days or fewer a week.

The head of the Royal College of GPS (RCGP) said yesterday that family doctors were working at an intensity that was “unsustainable” leading many to cut their hours, or take early retirement.

The proportion of GPS in England working full-time at surgeries has fallen to the lowest level since current records began five years ago, the figures show.

In total, 23 per cent of qualified permanent GPS worked at least 37.5 hours a week in June this year, down from 32 per cent in June 2017. The figures show that the number of GPS working fulltime fell from 10,740 to 8,207.

Earlier this year polling found that public satisfaction with GP services has fallen to the lowest on record.

Less than two fifths of people were satisfied with the service from family doctors last year, the British Social Attitudes survey shows, the lowest proportion since the survey began in 1983. The fall comes after patients struggled to access care during the pandemic, particularly face-to-face appointments. Pre-pandemic, around 80 per cent of consultations took place in person.

This dropped to less than 47 per cent during the first lockdown, with the latest figures for June showing 64.8 per cent of appointments were held face-toface. It comes amid widespread shortages of GPS, with forecasts suggesting a quarter of posts could be vacant within 10 years. The annual GP Patient Survey found that more than a quarter of patients had not made an appointment because they found it too difficult, up from 11 per cent in 2021.

Some 55 per cent of patients who needed an appointment said that they had avoided making one in the past 12 months, up from 42 per cent in 2021.

Prof Martin Marshall, chairman of RCGP, said there were 1,500 fewer qualified, full-time GPS than five years ago leaving staff “working to their absolute limits”. The figures show 25.9million appointments in June, down from 27.6 million in May, up from 24.7 million in the month before the first lockdown.

The figures show more than 44 per cent were same day appointments.

Dr Marshall said: “Working at this intensity is unsustainable and it’s unsafe for patients and staff. An exhausted GP is not able to practise safely or deliver the high-quality care and services they are trained and want to deliver.

“This is leading to GPS burning out and having to evaluate their futures in general practice, in some cases leaving the profession earlier than planned and in others reducing contracted working hours to make the job more sustainable. Yet working “part-time” in general practice often means working what would normally be considered fulltime, or longer – and will probably include many hours of paperwork on top of patient appointments.”

He said the “sad reality” was that the situation is likely to get worse, with surveys suggesting that nearly 19,000 GPS could leave the profession within the next five years.

The RCGP is calling for an increase in funding for GPS and a reduction in bureaucracy. The data, published by NHS Digital yesterday, also shows that the total number of qualified permanent GPS in England fell from 27,912 in June 2017 to 26,859 in June 2022 – a drop of 4 per cent. All figures are based on the number of full-time equivalent posts in the GP workforce, and do not include trainees or locums.

The figures show the NHS is increasingly dependent on doctors over the age of 60, as the number of those in their 50s falls, as rising numbers seek early retirement. While the number of GPS aged 50 to 59 fell from 30 per cent to 28 per cent, the number aged 60 and over went from eight to 10 per cent, according to the figures.

The Department of Health and Social Care said: “Boosting our GP workforce is essential to the nation’s health, which is why we are focused on recruiting and retaining those in general practice – and have seen nearly 1,500 more full-time equivalent doctors in general practice in June 2022 compared to June 2019.

“There are record numbers of GPS in training and we increased the number of funded medical school places by 25 per cent over three years up to 2020, and we will begin to see the first wave of these students enter foundation training from this year.”