Mass GP list closures would have ‘detrimental impact’

The Department of Health (DH) has urged the British Medical Association (BMA) to consider the ‘detrimental impact’ closing many practices would have on patients.

The DH suggested that last year’s GP Forward View rescue deal was resolving the problem even though GPs are ‘under more pressure than ever’.

GP leaders told Pulse they would use their survey to push the government to handle the situation, even though it is not a formal ballot for industrial action. The poll revealed 54 per cent of GP practices would consider temporarily stopping registrations to ‘focus on delivering safe care to patients already on their practice list’.

A DH spokesperson said: “GPs are under more pressure than ever, so we are backing the profession with an extra £2.4 billion of funding for general practice by 2020.

“We speak regularly to the BMA about issues concerning general practice and would urge them to consider the detrimental impact which list closures could have on patient care.”

But Richard Vautrey, BMA GP committee chair, said the survey showed ‘the GP Forward View promises have not delivered sufficiently so that practices, or individual GPs, can see a tangible difference to their everyday working arrangements and the workload pressures that they are under’.

He said: “'I think the reality is that practices are putting their patients first. They are seeing the pressures that their practices are under and their first priority is there existing patients, the patients they see on a day-to-day, week-by-week basis.

“They need to provide safe care for them and this would be a step that would be part of delivering that safe care to their patients.

“I think we do need to see a step change around workforce issues. We need a standard workforce, not a substitution of GPs. We need an expanding workforce as a whole.

“We need a swift solution to the indemnity crisis because many GPs are very worried it will ultimately mean they are not able to work over winter because of the accumulative cost of indemnity.”

“We have still not seen delivery on the promise of funding to support premise development, whether that be repair, or expansion of premises so that practices can work in a way that they need to for their patients.

“I think it’s those areas, that the government can deliver on, where we need to see some change.

“Rather than having funding that’s short term and evaporates into nothing, what we need is recurrent funding so we can have a sustainable expansion of the workforce, and some of that funding is currently within CCGs.”