Time to put patients first by investing in general practice

摘要

General practice is the cornerstone of the NHS, dealing with 90% of all patient contacts in our health services and helping to ensure the delivery of safe, effective patient care. Yet in recent years concerns have been mounting that a number of pressures facing GP surgeries are pushing UK general practice to breaking point. GENERAL PRACTICE UNDER PRESSURE A central part of the problem is that practice workloads have been rising relentlessly for some time. NHS England estimates that surgeries in England dealt with 340 million consultations in 2011 to 2012, up from around 300 million in 2008 (the last year for which the most robust data is available]. Anecdotal evidence, and the findings of a poll commissioned by the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) in 2013, suggest that most GPs are now dealing with a workload of 40-60 patient contacts every day.