All GP practices in England are considering taking industrial action this autumn

 

I am writing to you again now to let you know that all GP practices in England are considering taking industrial action this autumn.  At present, we don’t know exactly what form that will take, and we will communicate with all our patients when we are clearer.

For now, I just wanted to give you some preliminary information.

Why is industrial action being considered?

  • General Practice is desperately underfunded. For each patient we get paid for, we currently get about £107 per patient per year (although we have been told that is likely to rise to about £112) to provide all of your basic GP services.
  • We have just over 18000 patients at Horfield Health Centre.  We get paid by the NHS for just 16,500 of them for our base contract.
  • We get the same amount whether you are a patient who attends once per year or once per week.
  • General Practice deals with over 90% of all patient contacts within the NHS.
  • General Practice receives less than 7% of the total NHS budget (whereas we used to get about 11%).
  • The real terms decrease in GP funding has been going on for about the last 10 years.
  • General Practice provides 5 million more appointments per month than before the covid-19 pandemic.  There are now 1300 less GP practices in England than 10 years ago.  There are over 1700 less full time GPs in England than 10 years ago.
  • Without significant increases in funding in the near future, it is quite likely that General Practice as you currently know it won’t be around for your children or their children’s generation.
  • What industrial action is being considered?
  • We will not be going on strike.
  • We will not be breaching our contract with the NHS
  • Instead, we will be stopping doing all sorts of work that we are not actually paid for
  • That includes such options as
    • Limiting each GP to 25 patient contacts per day (which is deemed to be the safe limit by the European Union of GPs and the British Medical Association).  Our GPs currently do around 40.
    • Stop all voluntary services we currently offer to help colleagues in other parts of the NHS.  Effectively we currently do a lot of work that we shouldn’t have to do.
    • Refer all patients to hospital when it is clinically right to do that.  At present, we follow very complex guidelines to limit the number of patients we refer and try to treat as many as possible in General Practice.
    • Refuse to sign up to any new NHS pilot schemes that we often participate in without enough funding to cover the work we do.
  • All GP Practices in England are currently considering which steps they will take.   All GP partners in England voted in a referendum recently about whether industrial action was needed.  Over 98% of them decided it was.

We are very aware that any steps we take may impact our patients.  That is the last thing we want to do – but equally, if we don’t take action now, the partners here believe that the future of General Practice as a whole is at risk.

We will always prioritise patient safety in any actions we take.

I will write to you again when we know more details about exactly what steps we will take, and when we know it will start.  In the meantime, if you have any concerns, please do contact us.

Please also feel free to contact your local MP if you feel that any of the above points need action by the government and the NHS.
Yours sincerely

Dr Alison Bolam
On behalf of the partners at Horfield Health Centre

Published: Oct 14, 2024