DAUK’s Dr Steve Taylor highlighted the number of GPs who are out of work or struggling to fill their hours during a national radio discussion on NHs funding and reforms.
Dr Taylor, GP spokesperson for the Doctors’ Association UK (DAUK), said there was ‘a glut’ of GPs ready and able to work straight away.
He called for the funding to be made available to employ them to help take the pressure off the wider NHS.
Dr Taylor said: “We all want to see the GP quickly. I’ve been number 31 in the queue waiting on a Monday morning to book in with my own GP.
“We’ve got a shortage of appointments but we’ve got GPs who are unemployed and underemployed.
“I did a recent survey that found that there’s the equivalent of 3,000 doctors unemployed or underemployed who could be working tomorrow.
“The problem is the funding isn’t there to make that work.
“If we can get the funding in I think we will find that it all starts to work a bit better.”
NHS reform
Dr Taylor was speaking to Chloe Tilley and Calum Macdonald on Times Radio Breakfast about the appointment of former Health Secretary Alan Milburn as a lead non-executive director on the board of the health department.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has said there will be no extra NHS funding without reform.
But Dr Taylor said the extra funding needed to come first and then reform would more easily follow.
He said: “In general practice we’ve had a 20 per cent cut in funding per patient over the past eight years.
“GPs are now doing 20 per cent more work than before Covid in 2019, so there’s been a funding cut but an increase in productivity. That’s not necessarily true of hospitals but it is true of general practice.
“To say we need to reform before we have the funding is the wrong way round. Give us the funding and we will definitely make it work better.”
GP funding cut
Dr Taylor added: “We’ve done well over the last four or five years in training more and more GPs ready for the workforce, but during that period there has been a cut in the funding to general practice.
“Now there’s just not enough funding in the system to employ the doctors that we want.
“Some doctors are moving into the private sector, others are leaving the country altogether
“The reality is we have doctors who want to work, there just isn’t the funding in the system to make it work.
“The funding needs to be there to employ them and we can make it work.”
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Listen again to Dr Taylor’s interview with Chloe Tilley and Calum Macdonald on Times Radio Breakfast. It starts at around one hour, 20 minutes into the broadcast.
