Source · Select Committees · Health and Social Care Committee
Recommendation 1
1
Accepted
Paragraph: 32
General practice in crisis due to poor patient access and safety risks, unacknowledged by government.
Conclusion
The first step to solving a problem is to acknowledge it and we believe that general practice is in crisis. It is clear from the latest GP Patient survey results that despite the best efforts of GPs, the elastic has snapped after many years of pressure. Patients are facing unacceptably poor access to, and experiences of, general practice and patient safety is at risk from unsustainable pressures. Patient access is at the heart of NHS general practice and we are very concerned about this decline in standards. Given their reluctance to acknowledge the crisis in general practice we are not convinced that the Government or NHS England are prepared to address the problems in the service with sufficient urgency. The Government’s Plan for Patients places a welcome emphasis on improving access to general practice but the measures set out so far will not be sufficient to make a meaningful difference to patient access and do not deal sufficiently with how to improve outcomes.
Government response summary AI-generated
The government partially accepts, acknowledging access challenges but not a 'crisis'. It details ongoing efforts and specific actions from its Delivery Plan for Recovering Access to Primary Care, including a retargeted investment of over £1bn (up to £645m in community pharmacy, £240m for a new access approach), recruitment of over 29,000 primary care professionals since 2019, and measures to reduce GP bureaucracy.
Summary of the government's response below — read the verbatim text to verify.
Paragraph Reference:
32
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government · verbatim extract
Accepted
Partially accept. The Department partially accepts this recommendation. We recognise that some people are facing challenges trying to access general practice services in a timely way, and general practice teams have been working immensely hard to meet increased demand for care. The Delivery Plan for Recovering Access to Primary Care, published on 9 May 2023, acknowledges the pressure that general practice is under and commits to making it easier and quicker for the public to get the help they need from primary care. The Plan includes measures to empower patients by investing in tools people can use to manage their own health better and expanding services offered in community pharmacy by: • Retargeting over £1bn including investing up to £645m, over 2 years into community pharmacy; implement a new ‘Modern General Practice Access’ approach to tackle the 8am rush, backed by retargeted funding of £240m, so patients will no longer be asked to ring back another day for a response. • Building capacity so practices can offer more appointments, from more staff, than ever before; and cut bureaucracy to give practice teams more time to focus on the clinical needs of their patients, including freeing up £246m in funding for networks and reducing workload by streamlining the Impact and Investment Fund and Quality and Outcomes Framework. We have also committed to expand the use of self-referral and direct access into a range of community and secondary services for patients where GP involvement is not clinically necessary to free up GP and other general practice time and appointments. Alongside these measures, NHS England will introduce a National General Practice Improvement Programme with three tiers of support to help general practice deliver change that is clinically led, data-driven, evidence-based and measurable.
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