Dr Steve Taylor, GP co-lead for the Doctors’ Association UK (DAUK), made the call – which is central to our drive to restore general practice to the heart of the NHS – in an article in GP Online.

The campaign – Your GP, here for you – is calling for a new GP contract that puts patients at the centre of care.

Your GP, here for you

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.

Dr Taylor renewed the campaign call as he responded to comments by Health Minister Karin Smyth.

Ms Smyth had said that GP services were under pressure because they had lost out on NHS funding to hospitals.

GP funding

Dr Taylor told GP Online it was ‘vital’ funding was increased for GP practices if Government proposals to move more care out of hospitals and into the community were to be met.

He said: “Sadly [Labour] has just put a sticking plaster over the wound when substantial investment is needed. They will quote £1bn investment but ignore staff costs, national insurance and inflation. They will exaggerate the number of GPs added but they need to invest in practices.

“This needs to be at least [an extra] £40 per patient per year to restore funding to 2015 levels in real terms.”

Read the article and Dr Taylor’s comments in full at GP Online.

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Dr Steve Taylor, GP co-lead of the Doctors’ Association UK (DAUK), was speaking to GP Online.

GP Online reported general practice in England has lost almost 700 full-time equivalent GP partners since the last general election.

The numbers of younger partners was ‘in freefall’, it reported.

Younger GPs

Dr Taylor said: “The ongoing uncertainty about the future of GP services and in particular partnerships is causing younger GPs to think that there is no point considering taking on the risk.”

This reluctance is leaving ‘a smaller group of GP partners carrying the risk and burden’, Dr Taylor said.

He said: “A 20% cut in pounds-per-patient funding has left many practices with little choice but to take pay cuts and reduce costs.”

As hospital trusts run a £2.2bn deficit, GP practices are being left to ‘pick up the pieces of a failing NHS without the resources’, Dr Taylor added.

GP contract campaign

DAUK has launched a campaign – Your GP, here for you – for a new patient-centred GP contract.

It calls for a rise in funding per patient to secure the future of partnerships.

“In reality this needs to be £40–£50 per patient per year,” Dr Taylor said. “Without it there will be no GP services.”

Read the GP Online report in full.

We are a non-profit campaigning and lobbying organisation led by frontline doctors, for frontline doctors. We are volunteers and our collective aim is to give frontline workers a voice to be heard.

Please support our work by contributing to our crowd funder.

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.”

We are a non-profit campaigning and lobbying organisation led by frontline doctors, for frontline doctors. We are volunteers and our collective aim is to give frontline workers a voice to be heard.

Please support our work by contributing to our crowd funder.

Dr Steve Taylor, DAUK’s GP co-lead, has recorded a New Year message emphasising the campaign – Your GP, here for you – is about partnership between doctors and patients.

Your GP, here for you is calling for a new GP contract that puts patients at the centre of care.

The campaign also highlights the mounting pressures on GPs. Dr Taylor said patients wanted to see GPs back in surgeries, delivering face-to-face care where appropriate.

GP crisis

He emphasised that GPs themselves are patients, parents, sons and daughters who face the same access challenges as the public.

And he called on people to support the campaign by encouraging politicians to provide the funding and resources general practice urgently needs.

“We’d love to see is a combined effort to see general practice brought back into the centre of things,” Dr Taylor said.

“In order to pursue that, we need actually everyone working together.”

Your GP, here for you

As part of the Your GP, here for you campaign, DAUK has warned that current conditions threaten patient care and the viability of general practice long-term.

The new patient-centred GP contract is designed to strengthen continuity of care, expand accessible appointments, and rebuild general practice as the cornerstone of the NHS.

The campaign’s proposals are based on The future of general practice, the 2022 Health and Social Care Committee report produced with cross-party support.

DAUK is urging the Government to increase core GP funding by £40 per patient per year, less than £1 per week.

GP funding

This will restore funding to the real-terms level of 2016. Dr Taylor said that general practice provides ‘incredible value for money’.

General practice currently receives just 5.6% of the total NHS budget, despite delivering around 31 million appointments a month.

He said: “Payments to GP practices average £169 per patient per year. That is for all the services GP practices provide and an average six to seven appointments per patient per year.

“A&E gets £113 minimum per attendee, while out patients get £152 minimum for seeing a professional on first attendance. General practice is being short changed by NHS England,” he added.

We are a non-profit campaigning and lobbying organisation led by frontline doctors, for frontline doctors. We are volunteers and our collective aim is to give frontline workers a voice to be heard.

Please support our work by contributing to our crowd funder.