General practice needs investment to provide enhanced services, says BMA

The BMA has launched a new campaign to lobby for greater investment in UK general practice and raise awareness of the “unprecedented strain” currently facing the service.

The Your GP Cares campaign1 will highlight to patients how the pressures of escalating demand and a shortage of funding are affecting GP services and public access. It will urge politicians and policy makers to commit new investment to expand the overall number of GPs and practice staff and to improve premises to enable surgeries to provide an enhanced range of services.

Launching the initiative this week, the BMA said that GPs were seeing a greater number of vulnerable patients and providing more care for those with chronic diseases in often inadequate premises despite receiving no extra funding.

The growing demand was leading to appointment delays and causing morale to plummet in the profession, the association warned.

The launch comes after Simon Stevens, the new chief executive of NHS England, recently acknowledged the imbalance in workforce numbers that stemmed from an almost 76% increase in the number of hospital consultants since 2000, compared with just a 21% increase in the number of GPs in the same period.2

As well as calling for more resources, the BMA’s campaign will aim to highlight the unique strengths of UK general practice and demonstrate the role that it can play in managing the growing pressure on the wider NHS.

Chaand Nagpaul, chairman of the BMA’s GP committee, said, “The environment in which we work is becoming increasingly challenging. GPs across the country tell us that they are constantly firefighting to provide the services their patients need, leading to exhaustion and stress.

“All of this can have a detrimental effect on the services that practices can provide, leaving patients frustrated as more and more are left waiting for appointments. It is time we addressed these issues head on, which is why our campaign aims to bring to people’s attention the true picture of general practice; and it calls for investment in GPs, practice staff, and premises so that we can deliver the care our patients deserve.”

Krishna Kasaraneni, a GP in South Yorkshire, said that he had seen how the recruitment and retention crisis was affecting patient care since joining his surgery as a trainee 12 months ago.

He said, “A year on, two GPs have already left, and another two senior GPs are leaving to work in Canada, putting more pressure on our ability to deliver services to patients. It is a sad reality that many GPs are choosing to work abroad due to increasing workload pressures in the UK: two of my friends who left three years ago ‘for a year’ are yet to return, and I have no reason to believe that the ones leaving now will break that trend.”