Exclusive The BMA’s GP committee will ask the next Government to ensure that funding for out-of-hospital care gets ‘at least a 15% share’ of the NHS budget, its chair has revealed.
Dr Katie Bramall-Stainer told Pulse that this would form part of GPC England’s manifesto, which is also expected to include ‘an ambition towards’ a limit on patient numbers per GP, ahead of potential collective action for the profession.
She said that this ‘won’t happen overnight’ but that the GPCE will work with the next Government towards ‘a new substantive contract for GP practices’, including bringing the current share of funding for care outside of hospitals from 7% to ‘over 15%’.
Dr Bramall-Stainer had previously highlighted that ‘practices currently receive 7.2% of the NHS budget’, meaning that they deliver ‘phenomenal value for money’.
Dr Bramall-Stainer told Pulse: ‘We want to work with the next Government in July to champion a 2025 Family Doctor Charter, 60 years after the Wilson government set out the first, and work towards a new substantive contract for GP practices within the next Parliament, where funding outside of hospitals and across the wider community as a proportion of whole NHS spend would have at least a 15% share.’
She added that the GPC will be asking for the share to be increased to ‘over 15%’ and ‘15% is definitely a floor not a ceiling’.
NHS community health care services experienced a reduction in their share of total funding in the past eight years, from 8% in 2016/17 to 7% in 2022/23.
According to the Nuffield Trust, this is because funding for community health services has grown at a slower rate compared to acute and ambulance services, increasing by only 3.2% since 2016 – the equivalent to average annual increases of just 0.5% a year.
At the beginning of this year, NHS England has said it was ‘forced’ to cut primary care funding due to inflation and energy cost pressures.
The commissioner’s annual report for 2022/23 said it needed to find extra funding to cover higher energy costs and inflationary pressures.
As a result, NHSE had to cut other funding streams, particularly for primary care and digital investment.
The RCGP previously called for the general practice budget to be restored to account for 11% of total health spend.
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