GP crisis as doctors quit in droves and patients can't get appointments
GP numbers have continued to fall in England as burnt out senior doctors quit or cut their hours. Despite repeated Tory promises to drastically increase the workforce full time GPs have dropped year-on-year for 12 months in a row.
GPs warn primary care is being “pushed closer towards the precipice” as patients find it harder to see their family doctor. NHS Digital figures show there were 26,521 fully qualified full-time-equivalent (FTE) GPs in June 2023, down 1.3% from 26,859 in June 2022.
The latest figures also show the proportion of GPs in England working full-time at local surgeries continues to be at its lowest level since current records began nearly eight years ago. That is despite the 2019 Conservative Party general election pledge to recruit 6,000 more GPs by 2024. There are now 977 fewer fully-qualified GPs than in December 2019.
Professor Kamila Hawthorne, chair of the Royal College of GPs, said: “Demand for our services has grown significantly, we’re now dealing with over five million more appointments a month than in December 2019. The average number of patients per GP in England is now a staggering 2,302 - an increase equivalent to an extra 159 patients per GP since December 2019.”
GP workforce statistics can fluctuate month to month, which is why year-on-year comparisons are a more reliable measure of long-term change. The latest drop of 1.3% in June comes after annual decreases of 1.4% up to March, 1.5% up to April and 1.3% up to May.
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The 6,000 extra GPs pledge is the latest broken promise from the Tories. In 2015 they promised 5,000 extra GPs by 2020 but the workforce actually shrank. In September then-Health Secretary Thérèse Coffey set out “the expectation that everyone who needs a GP appointment can get one within two weeks”. In June more than five million appointment dates were more than two weeks after booking, up 19% from 4.2 million in June 2022.
Lib Dem leader Ed Davey said: “The Conservatives have broken promise after promise on local health services, and people have had enough. The Government has cut the number of GPs, leaving millions facing distressing delays of more than two weeks. Patients right across the country are struggling to get a GP appointment when they need one. That has devastating consequences for their health, and is putting huge extra pressure on ambulances and hospitals too.”
The figures are based on the number of full-time equivalent posts in the GP workforce, and do not include trainees or locums. Some 22.7% of qualified permanent GPs worked at least 37.5 hours a week in June 2023, down from 23.4% in June 2022, while 69.2% worked between 15 and 37.5 hours, up from 68.6%. The earliest data shows 33.3% of permanent GPs were working full-time in September 2015, with 59.7% working 15-37.5 hours.
Ruth Rankine, director of primary care at the NHS Confederation said: “While general practice continues to work above and beyond, they are still continuing to do this amidst the repetitive cycle of drops in fully qualified GPs and number of practices.”
NHS England’s 15-year Workforce Plan, published last month, included an independent assessment that it was short of 150,000 permanent staff needed to properly function. The Government highlighted that overall there were 6,000 more doctors and over 15,200 more nurses in the NHS in England than this time last year.
Health minister Will Quince said: “Today’s figures demonstrate the clear progress being made to train and recruit record numbers of staff across the NHS. Cutting waiting lists is one of the Government’s five priorities and we are committed to ensuring we have the workforce in place to achieve that. We will build on this progress through the first ever NHS Long Term Workforce Plan, which will deliver the biggest training expansion in NHS history and recruit and retain hundreds of thousands more staff over the next 15 years, backed by over £2.4 billion in Government funding."
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