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Good morning. The House of Commons will be sitting properly again today and Thérèse Coffey, the new health secretary and deputy prime minister, will make a statement on plans to improve the NHS. Liz Truss has said that, at the start of her premiership, she wants to focus on three priorities: health, cutting taxes, and energy. During the Tory leadership contest Truss talked a lot about the second two topics, but she said almost nothing about her thinking on health policy. Her campaign sent out almost 50 press releases, but only one of them mentioned the NHS, and only three mentioned health.
Some aspects of the announcement have been briefed overnight, and Coffey will be setting out “her expectation that everyone who needs one should get an appointment at a GP practice within two weeks”. Older readers may remember that around 20 years ago the Labour government has a target for everyone being able to see a GP within two days, not two weeks – although it led to GPs refusing to book appointments more than two days in advance, and was later scrapped by the Tories.
Lumbering a struggling service with more expectations, without a plan as to how to deliver them, will only serve to add to the intense workload and workforce pressures GPs and our teams are facing, whilst also having minimal impact on the care patients receive.
The target of GPs now offering appointments within two weeks is simply another addition to a tick-box culture highlighting a tone-deaf government approach when it comes to those delivering the service on the ground.
GPs need to be freed up to deliver the care that we know patients so desperately need – that means we need a genuine strategy to address the workforce crisis. There simply aren’t enough GPs and staff to deliver the care our patients need and deserve.
Today’s GP workforce data shows that between August 2021 and August 2022 we lost the equivalent of 314 full-time GPs. We now have the equivalent of 1,850 fewer fully qualified full time GPs than we did in 2015, with 16% more patients per GP. We are losing more GPs than we can recruit and this combined with cost of living pressures is starting to spell the end of GP practices as we know them …
If the new health secretary had met with us before this announcement we could have suggested a workable strategy to address the unfolding crisis before us for this winter and beyond – instead we have in reality minor tweaks that will make no tangible difference to patients struggling to access care.
