Additional targets will not create more GPs

Commenting on the Secretary of State’s announcement on GP appointments as part of ‘Our Plan for Patients’, Nuffield Trust Director of Strategy Helen Buckingham said:

“The government is right to be looking at ways to ease pressure on GP services – whether through an expanded role for pharmacists, using different staff within a GP practice, and improving creaking telephone systems.

“But even if this frees up some of their time, the truth is that we are chronically short of GPs, with the number of GPs per person in England falling year after year. Targets don’t create any more doctors. The success of this proposal will rest on whether the government can genuinely do enough to retain doctors at risk of quitting the profession, as well as how successful it is in recruiting more support staff.

“The commitment to guarantee an appointment within two weeks may make good politics, but risks applying a one-size fits all solution to a significantly more complex picture. Government should step back from micro-managing timescales for appointments and instead focus on the outcomes they want to see in primary care.

“With cloud-based telephone systems set to run alongside NHS 111, the NHS app, phoning out of hours and a multitude of other ways to access care, we risk simply proliferating ways for patients to find out the ugly truth of general practice: there just aren’t enough doctors to go around.”