Doctors are warning of a “torrid winter” ahead for patients and surgeries as GP shortages, increased demand for appointments, winter pressures and vaccination programmes combine to push general practice to the brink.
Dr Nick Mann, a London GP, said said this winter would be ‘chaos’
The GP workforce has, he said, lost the equivalent of nearly 2,000 full time GPs since 2015 while at the same time each practice has gained, on average, 2057 more patients and almost 500 practices have closed for good in the last nine years, due to staffing and resourcing pressures. Professor Martin Marshall, chair of the RCGP Council, said there’s ‘a risk more people will end up in emergency departments’
The BMA has called for extra workforce this winter, NHS Reserves and additional vaccinators, to help with the vaccination programme and ease pressure on GPs. And the association wants the Government to publish a “long-term workforce plan” to train and retain more GPs before the winter. “We need to be honest with the public… the health service is under enormous pressure”, he said. “We need to be much better at sign-posting people to alternative services.