General practitioners are out of work or unable to secure enough sessions through a lack of funding for GP jobs, says DAUK.
Dr Steve Taylor, DAUK’s GP co-lead, spoke about the crisis in GP employment during an interview on national radio.
He said patients may be surprised to hear about the numbers of unemployed and under-employed GPs at a time when access to appointments is such a prominent political issue.
Speaking on LBC, Dr Taylor said: “There are GPs who simply can’t get work at the moment, and others who want to work more but can’t.
GP unemployment
“The number of available GP jobs has dropped by around half in the last two years. That’s not a workforce problem, it’s a funding problem.”
Dr Taylor criticised the ‘manipulation’ of access figures by the Government and claims hundreds of thousands of patients are waiting more than a month for appointments.
He explained that while around 300,000 patients booked appointments more than a month ahead, 1.9 million more patients booked appointments on the same day compared with the previous year.
Political football
“These figures are being used as part of a political game,” he said.
“GPs and patients are fed up with being political footballs. We don’t want to be involved in that. We just want proper funding so patients can see GPs and GPs can see patients.”
Dr Taylor also challenged government claims about reducing bureaucracy and recruiting 2,600 extra GPs.
He said the real increase in fully qualified, practising GPs was closer to 700 or 800.
Many of the roles being counted, he said, were short-term posts under the Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme (ARRS) rather than permanent GP jobs.
Your GP, here for you
DAUK has launched a campaign – Your GP, here for you – which aims to to restore general practice to the heart of the NHS.
It calls for a new GP contract that puts patients at the centre of care.
Currently, general practice receives just 5.6% of the total NHS budget, despite delivering around 31 million appointments a month.
Your GP, here for you urges the Government to increase core GP funding by £40 per patient per year, less than £1 per week. This will restore funding to the real-terms level of 2016.
Proper investment
Dr Taylor warned that shifting care from hospitals into the community without investing properly in general practice risked worsening pressures across the system.
He added that headline funding increases are often offset by rising costs, including employers’ national insurance contributions and staff pay.
“Practices are effectively being given money so they can hand it straight back to the government,” he said.
Dr Taylor called on politicians to be honest about the data and to listen to clinicians on the ground.
“We need facts, not fiction,” he said. “If government used accurate figures and funded general practice properly, patients would see the difference.”
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