The British Medical Association (BMA) has warned that Ministers must act urgently to address the crisis facing the GP workforce in England following a new report commissioned by the Government.
The new report from the GP Taskforce, 'Securing the Future GP Workforce', concludes that the GP workforce is now shrinking rather than growing and that there is an unequal distribution of GPs across the country with areas of high deprivation having fewer GPs per head than the UK average.
The reports states that, despite the Department of Health's policy to increase GP training numbers in England to 3,250 per annum, GP recruitment has remained stubbornly below this target, at around 2,700 per annum, for the last four years. While the number of GPs per 100,000 head of population across England increased from 54 in 1995 to 62 in 2009, it has now declined to 59.5. It also notes that large number of GPs are planning to retire in the next five years and that these workforce issues are coinciding with patients facing increasing problems accessing GP services.
The report outlines a number of possible solutions, including the need to promote general practice as a positive career choice - starting in schools, and then through medical schools and Foundation Programmes.
Responding to the report, Dr Richard Vautrey, deputy chair of the BMA’s GP committee, said:
“Following persistent pressure from the BMA, we are pleased that at long last the GP taskforce report that was finalised in March has been published. It not only provides a valuable summary of the serious challenges facing the GP workforce that the BMA has been highlighting for a number of years but also puts forward many of the solutions that we too have been calling for.
“We have reached a serious crisis point where not enough GPs are being recruited and too many are retiring early. Recent GP trainee recruitment figures showed hundreds of vacancies across the UK. A BMA survey in March suggested that six out of ten GP were considering early retirement, with a third actively planning for this decision.
“There is no longer any time to waste and the Government needs to implement the findings of this report in full and begin a programme of sustained, long term investment in the GP workforce as the BMA has called for in the 'Your GP Cares' campaign.”
http://hee.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/321/2014/07/GP-Taskforce-report.pdf
