An online blog in the British Medical Journal says, the general practices nationally are at breaking point.
While the UK is allegedly dealing with around 90% of patient contacts for under 10% of the national budget, the blog stated, “GPs are seen as the “gatekeepers” to the NHS providing over 300 million patient consultations each year, compared to 23 million emergency department visits. If general practice fails, the entire NHS will collapse.” The blog mentioned that GPs have been supporting over 1 million patients in the community with long Covid.
“A year’s worth of GP care per patient costs less than two trips to the emergency department, and for the past decade funding for hospitals has been growing around twice as fast as for our family doctor services,” the blog read.
The blog represents some ideas to tackle the situation: Firstly, address red tape, bureaucracy and long hours, which are all key causes of low morale and burnout, immediate changes are needed to enable hospital teams to generate their own interdepartmental referrals, medical certificates and additional investigations, Simplify referral processes, GP teams cannot be everything to everyone, and our resources are finite, Enable flexible working to become the norm, Invest in health promotion through education and support at a community level, and also highlighted that GPs need a strong media team and patients need to be kept as the centre of what they do.
The NHS Five Year Forward View summed this up and said, “If general practice fails, the NHS fails.”
