TY - JOUR T1 - Access to general practice in a time of austerity JF - British Journal of General Practice JO - Br J Gen Pract SP - 116 LP - 117 DO - 10.3399/bjgp13X664063 VL - 63 IS - 608 AU - Richard Baker AU - Carolyn Tarrant Y1 - 2013/03/01 UR - http://bjgp.org/content/63/608/116.abstract N2 - Patient access to GPs will be under intense pressure over the next 10 years. Not only is demand increasing, driven by increased population numbers and an ageing, multimorbid population, but GPs will be expected to relieve hospitals of as much patient care as possible. Healthcare expenditure will not be increased, and GPs will have to find ways to do more with less funding per patient. To aggravate matters, it is proving difficult to fill all the vocational training places, and there are too few GPs to meet the needs for care.1Alongside this increasing pressure, there is also growing concern about inequalities in access to general practice. Data from the national GP Patient Surveys have found that certain groups of patients, including patients from black and minority ethnic backgrounds, and less affluent patients, consistently report less positive experiences of access.2 The recent NHS commissioning document, which sets a planning framework for clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) in England,3 is explicit that CCGs should plan services to reduce inequalities in primary care. Primary care providers are therefore tasked with simultaneously managing demand to avoid becoming overwhelmed, and ensuring that the most vulnerable and needy are not disadvantaged in their access to services.Now, more than ever, we need to understand more about the complexities of managing access to primary care. In this … ER -