NHS England recently published a letter outlining details of the 2024/25 GP contract. Not many of us were expecting a huge windfall for practices this year, but even so, it was still a shock to find out just how little is being invested in general practice in the coming year. In this month’s podcast, I…

Many in general practice dread the first weeks in January because we just know things are going to be bad. But why is this? Is it really inevitable, and is there anything we can do to stop it being quite so tough? The starting point is to understand why so many people come through the…

One of the concepts that has been flying around over the last 18 months is that of integrated neighbourhood teams, but nailing down exactly what they are is proving challenging. One of the most popular search terms on my website is “what is an integrated neighbourhood team?”, so if you’re not sure what they are,…

General practice has changed. Gone are the days when practices consisted of a group of GPs working together, with an administrator providing support with the day-to-day running of the practice. Now practices operate with a much wider range of clinical roles working together as a multi-disciplinary team, all supported by a far more developed management…

The number of incidents of staff receiving abuse from patients or their relatives has risen in the last couple of years. According to a recent Pulse FOI request, this includes the number of crimes committed at GP practices that involve violence or harassment and the number of public order offences at GP practices. Of course,…

The long-awaited NHS Long Term Workforce Plan was finally published on 30th June this year. But at 151 pages long, have you had time to wade your way through it? If not, here are the ten things you need to know about it – most of which we covered in the latest episode of the…

Even though the GP contract for this year has been billed as the imposition of Year 5 of the existing five-year contract agreed in 2019, the reality is that it contains some significant changes. So significant, in fact, that the government had to take these changes through parliament to put them in place. Essentially, practices…