The Doctors’ Association UK (DAUK) is urging the Health Secretary to involve GPs in cutting the red tape in general practice.
DAUK’s GP Committee stands ready to work with Wes Streeting on cutting bureaucracy and addressing issues with primary and secondary care communication.
It follows a speech by the Health Secretary at the Royal College of GPs conference in which the Government launched a so-called Red Tape Challenge with NHSE to cut down on bureaucracy and free up GPs’ time to spend with patients.
DAUK’s GP Committee welcomed his focus on primary care but said the solutions needed input from GPs.
The committee also called on Mr Streeting to tone down the ‘negative rhetoric’ around general practice which was ‘encouraging resentment towards GPs’.
Urgent attention
Dr Lizzie Toberty, DAUK GP lead, said: “The interface between primary and secondary care is problematic and needs urgent attention.
“While Mr Streeting has understood the diagnosis, the treatment is wide of the mark and would benefit from input from GPs on the ground rather than managers in Whitehall.
“Negative rhetoric from Mr Streeting is not helpful and encourages public resentment towards GPs, who are desperately trying to do their best for their patients in a failing system.
“It also compounds the low staff morale highlighted in Lord Darzi’s recent report.”
Dr Ellen Welch, DAUK vice-chair, said proper funding for general practice to meet demand, which is at an all-time high, to retain and recruit GPs, and stop the closing down of practices should be the priority for the Government when it comes to primary care.
She said: “In England, the number of medical staff working in hospitals has increased by thousands – 163 per cent more consultants over the past 25 years – while general practices have closed in their hundreds, and the primary care workforce is shrinking with almost 2,000 fewer GPs than we had in 2015.
Demand
“Despite this, demand is high, and an average of 1.4 million GP appointments per working day were delivered between March 2023 and February 2024.
“On top of this, GPs are being expected by hospital teams to perform additional work for free. Every day, general practices across the UK receive letters asking GPs to kindly complete an array of unfunded tasks.
“Referral forms are a small part of our daily red tape but much more time is spent dealing with unfunded requests from secondary care such as ordering and chasing blood tests and investigations; providing fit notes or prescriptions for patients who have been seen in hospital; referring patients to another specialist; and chasing relatively small pots of money from ICBs.
“For the past decade, funding for hospitals has grown twice as fast as funding for general practice.
“Getting rid of a few referral forms will not revolutionise primary care, and on the whole GPs have taken the initiative to do this already.”
Collective action
The GP Committee also responded to Mr Streeting’s call for GPs in England to end collective action, with the Health Secretary saying he understood why doctors ‘wanted to give the previous government a kicking’.
GP spokesperson Dr Rosie Shire said: “Collective action is not about giving anyone a ‘kicking’. It is about doing what we are contracted and paid to do.
“No other section of society expects public or private sector workers to do work for free, and NHS general practice can no longer allow the service to run on goodwill when they are at risk of closing under the pressures.”
GP spokesperson Dr Sarah Jacques said investment was also needed in IT and estates to improve efficiency. Indeed, the Darzi review of the NHS found that ‘crumbling buildings hit productivity’ as well as impacted staff morale.
Dr Jacques said: “Primary care needs a fully-funded model with the promise of a long-term uplift to core funding.
“Buildings which are not fit for purpose and IT belonging somewhere in the last decade also need urgent attention.
“Only then will we see some meaningful change.”
