Nearly 10,000 GPs have signed an RCGP letter demanding that the health secretary urgently reviews general practice retention and workforce growth plans.
RCGP chair Professor Kamila Hawthorne will deliver the letter to the Department of Health and Social Care later today.
A total of 9,765 GPs, GP trainees and retired GPs across England signed the letter asking Wes Streeting to ‘urgently review’ NHS England’s long-term workforce plan published in June last year.
The workforce plans only aims to increase the number of fully qualified GPs by 4% by 2037, compared to a 49% growth in hospital consultants – a move that would leave an ‘already chronically understaffed’ general practice ‘woefully unprepared’ to meet patient needs, the letter said.
In its election manifesto, the Labour Party committed to delivering the NHS workforce plan, and Mr Streeting has regularly claimed that it was based on Labour’s own policies.
In his first official visit, he also acknowledged GP unemployment and said it is ‘absurd’ that GPs are struggling to find jobs.
The letter said: ‘As you have already acknowledged, it is absurd that some GPs are now struggling to find work when patients are crying out to see their GP.
‘Successive governments’ underfunding of general practice and lack of workforce planning means there simply is not sufficient funding to enable practices to recruit the GPs they need, and this is jeopardising the standard of care patients receive.’
The letter argued that only increasing GP numbers by 4% ‘would fly in the face of Labour’s manifesto commitment’ to shift resources to primary care and community services.
Labour’s manifesto pledged to ‘bring back the family doctor’ and ‘reform’ primary care, trialling ‘neighbourhood health centres’ which would have GPs and other community health staff ‘under one roof’.
The letter added: ‘We therefore ask you to urgently review the NHS’s Long Term Workforce Plan to better reflect your manifesto commitments.
‘We need a comprehensive plan to provide sufficient capacity to train more GPs, do much more to retain the GPs we have, and ensure practices have the infrastructure and resources to employ enough GPs and their teams to deliver safe, timely and appropriate care.’
Professor Hawthorne said: ‘What we think is missing in the plan is a focus on retention – keeping the experienced, highly-skilled GPs we have in the profession longer, delivering the patient care they are trained to and want to deliver.
‘It does include bold ambitions to train more GPs but not on keeping them, and we know from our outreach with members that thousands of GPs are considering leaving the profession earlier than planned – often citing stress and burnout as reasons for this – and that this is happening at all career stages, not just those approaching retirement age.
‘This is why we’ve written to the Secretary of State urging him to review the plan and almost 10,000 of our members have signed our letter, showing significant strength of feeling amongst the GP profession.’
Yesterday an influential think-tank said that the new Government must address GP partner retention and unemployment among salaried GPs ‘as a priority’.
A major Pulse investigation last year looked in detail into the workforce plan and whether it could solve long-standing issues in general practice.
