London (Parliament Politics Magazine) – Labour’s commitment to “end the 8 am scramble” for medical appointments will be unattainable without raising core allocation for GPs, according to a leading medical association.
What are the funding challenges facing Labour’s GP appointment reforms?
The health secretary, Wes Streeting, promised during the general election drive that Labour would “end the 8 am scramble by permitting patients to easily book appointments to visit the doctor they want, in the manner they choose”. But the Doctors’ Association UK expressed more funding is required with the organisation’s GP lead, Dr Lizzie Toberty, conveying that at least another £35 for each patient a year is needed to match funding levels from a decade ago.
How does current GP funding impact patient access to appointments?
“We accept [the same] payment per patient, per year, no matter how difficult, no matter what they need doing, no matter how many meetings they have,” Toberty said. “[The] payment has not been boosted in line with inflation or patient need, so over the years prior care has had to do more and more with less and less, which can be noticed in the difficulties people have in getting to see their GP and in terms of patient satisfaction,” she stated.
The NHS spent an average of £164.64 for each recorded patient in 2022-23, according to recent data. Despite the high need for GP surgeries, less than 10% of the £165bn NHS budget in England is paid for primary care. As of April, there are 2,294 patients per GP, a 7.2% growth since 2019. In a 22% growth from the year before, 60,905,102 appointments took place more than two weeks after being ordered between January and December last year more than three times the 6% upgrade in total appointments.
What did the Department of Health say?
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said that the administration has “committed to recruiting over 1,000 newly eligible GPs through an £82m boost to the Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme” in expectancies of easing the workload facing the 27,670 full-time fully qualified GPs working in England as of June. “This government is also bearing the Review Body on Doctors’ and Dentists’ Remuneration’s salary recommendation of a 6% uplift to pay and is consulting on the implementation,” the department spokesperson expressed.
In a note to the representative body for GPs in England, the government stated it will fund this 6% uplift with a 7.4% growth to the global sum for 2024-25. Toberty claimed that this would not be enough to support the pay rise. “It’s a step in the right direction but again shows a misunderstanding of what happens in general practice and the complexities of the funding model,” she stated. “Essentially, we require a new, less convoluted contract.”
Earlier this month, family physicians voted overwhelmingly in acceptance of staging industrial action for the first time in 60 years, to oppose a new contract in which the last government decided to a 1.9% funding increase for 2024-25 witnessed as financially unviable by the British Medical Associa