Health secretary Wes Streeting has committed to a ‘refreshed’ NHS workforce plan next summer which will have a ‘laser-focus’ on boosting GP numbers.
Over the weekend, Mr Streeting announced plans to rework the current NHS workforce strategy, published in 2023, which aims to increase GP training places by 50% to 6,000 by 2031.
The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) highlighted yesterday, however, that the plan would only increase the number of fully-qualified GPs by 4% by 2036/37, compared to a 49% increase in hospital consultants.
This disparity has been raised by the RCGP, who wrote to the health secretary in July – along with 10,000 GP signatories – to demand an urgent review of general practice workforce plans.
DHSC has said that the revised workforce plan for England will be unveiled next summer, after publication of the 10-year plan for health, which is due in the spring.
Mr Streeting pointed to Lord Darzi’s review which in September ‘diagnosed the dire state of the NHS’ and found that ‘too many people end up in hospital, because there aren’t the resources in the community to reach patients earlier’.
He continued: ‘Our 10 Year Health Plan will deliver three big shifts in the focus of healthcare from hospital to community, analogue to digital, and sickness to prevention.
‘We will refresh the NHS workforce plan to fit the transformed health service we will build over the next decade, so the NHS has the staff it needs to treat patients on time again.’
DHSC said that ‘too much care is being delivered in hospitals because of historic underinvestment in the community’, and highlighted that there are almost 16% fewer fully qualified GPs in the UK than other high income countries, relative to the population.
‘The Government and NHS will unveil a refreshed Workforce Plan in the summer with a laser-focus on shifting care from hospitals and into the community, as we work to get the NHS back on its feet and fit for the future,’ a statement from DHSC said.
The department also laid out data showing that:
- The number of nurses working in the community fell by at least 5%, between 2009 and 2023;
- There has been a reduction of nearly 20% in the number of health visitors between 2019 and 2023;
- The number of mental health nurses has just returned to its 2010 level.
DHSC also claimed that patients ‘end up in A&E’ because they ‘can’t get the care they need in the community’, such as GP appointments.
NHS England chief executive Amanda Pritchard said that they had already ‘committed to update the plan regularly so that it reflects the changing and growing needs of patients’.
She added: ‘While the NHS is delivering more care to patients in the community, with the expansion of virtual wards, community diagnostic centres and neighbourhood hubs, part of our longer term goal is delivering even more care out of hospitals, and we’ll work closely with the government to refresh the workforce plan, alongside the upcoming 10 Year Health Plan.’
In March this year, the public spending watchdog revealed that the workforce plan’s ambitions were based on ‘significant’ substitution of fully qualified GPs with trainees and SAS doctors.
It found that NHSE’s modelling of the future workforce has ‘significant weaknesses’ and that some of its ‘assumptions’ may have been ‘optimistic’.
There are currently 6 hospital doctors for every GP WTE.
In the last 20 year consultant numbers have tripled and GP numbers have remained flat (or fallen slightly) despite significant population increases. Has hospital output or productivity improved as a result? GP productivity has massively increased over the same period.
The current workforce plan is a joke.
If they wnt to change things, they would do well to remember the words of Thomas Edison: ‘vision without execution is hallucination’.
If they want to demonstrate their seriousness, they can start by funding us properly so that we can employ the large numbers of GPs already struggling to find employment. They can also reinstitute the new to partnership scheme to get younger GPs to commit to the job and to their communities.
None of the above is difficult, it’s that DOH/NHSE is not fit for the purpose of delivering it.
The current primary care strategy seems to be to remove GPs from primary care. Seems little point training more in this climate though I’m sure Australia and New Zealand amongst other will appreciate it.
^And Canada and Qatar.
Had no need to wait until summer to address the looming cost of living increase/NICs through an immediate uplift
Making the same mistakes as many health secretaries before him in failing to sort out 2′ care productivity
GP IA hasn’t forced his hand
No sense of panic when it comes to primary care
Daily telegraph today
”Do not game A&E this winter, Wes Streeting warns NHS chiefs
Health Secretary urges trusts to improve ambulance response times, focus on reducing long waits in casualty and stop prioritising easy cases”
Dr Tim Cooksley, immediate past president of the Society for Acute Medicine, said: “It is concerning that the Secretary of State feels it reasonable to reiterate the need to focus on the key priorities that frontline clinical and operational staff aim to optimise every day under extreme pressure.
“The stark reality is not that hospitals and staff on the frontline are manipulating targets but that they are simply unable to deliver safe and effective care even when trying their utmost to do so given the impossible situations they are in.
“There is insufficient workforce and capacity to meet the demands of an increasingly ageing population with multiple health issues with simply no resilience to cope with any excess strain and the sooner the government acknowledges this reality – along with the need to adequately fund and reform social care – the better for everyone.
“The extra cases of winter viruses, such as Covid, flu, norovirus and RSV, mean many hospitals will fall into critical incidents and patient safety will be compromised – but not as a result of hard-working staff not putting patient safety first but because the hospitals simply cannot cope.
“This message also comes days after the prime minister announced a drive to reduce referral to treatment waiting times as a priority but without factoring in that there will be no elective recovery without emergency care recovery – and adequate social care provision as well.”
Who has it right then?
The insightful and passionate comments on this site always make me feel like I’m not alone fighting the good fight at the front line. But when will a decent, compassionate, investigative journalist really force some accountability by shining a proper light on the wastage, lunacy and irresponsibility of those “in charge”?? It needs more depth, more challenge, more volume if it’s going to be an article worth writing or that has an impact on patients.
I read the articles on pulse from 12months ago, or 3 years, or pre-Covid and can not understand why we continue to put up with such diabolical leadership by such unskilled and faceless twerps…….
So many wonderful members of the primary care team have tried to help steer policy/funding/interfaces/strategy but it is clearly going to take something different. The mainstream media are clearly lazy or influenced so when will a hero outside of our immediate clinical sphere step up on our behalf for the benefit of all??? The data is there. The numbers don’t lie. So we clearly need help explaining to the public the value of fully qualified GPs!!!!!!
@NorthernTrainer, I feel exactly like you. It’s a cliche to say the NHS should be above party politics but neoliberal economics madness in the form of Blairism and 14 years of Tory austerity has destroyed the NHS. The solution’s simple – fund it properly, and build up primary care. It’s the political will that’s missing, including so far in the Starmer Govt.
But I do feel that as the chattering ‘goldfish attention span’ MSM (mainstream media, tv and print) doesn’t help clarify the issues (perhaps because of their own political agendas and their owners’), then why oh why doesn’t the catatonic BMA organise a march down to Downing St to highlight the issues and catch the public attention before the NHS is gearshifted into a future sale to USA corporates in exchange for a trade deal (which’ll no doubt stuff the farmers as well, but at least those also self-employed people marched and tractored down to London in their interest ).
Who’s gonna train the new intake? Or mentor the Allied Health Professionals for that matter? Dr No and 100s like me are bailing out. Too little too late. Wake up Wes! You have 6 months to inspire me to change my mind, at best.
as Dr No above says, who is going to train the new GPs if the intention is to train 6,000 GPs per year by 2031?
I think until the underlying economic theory (to which Govt subscribes) changes from the failure of tight monetary idol worship to an aggressive but looser flexible fiscal mixed economy which isn’t afraid to tax wealth:
then any strategy and tactics employed for the NHS, schools, housing, energy etc will be divided and divisive, a distraction, and merely transfer tax money to the private sector and Saudi Arabia!!
That’s why the 10 year plan is quite likely a hallucination, but more likely a delusion and commenters are right to be p*ssed off and cynical. What is the BMA going to do about it?