Experts continued to give a mixed reaction to the government’s “recovery plan” for GP services yesterday – calling for more doctors to solve the problems in the sector.

The plan relies on switching appointments to pharmacists and improving practice phone services – and has promised more than £500 million in funding to support this. The major health think-tanks and the British Medical Association called for a commitment to increase GP numbers in order to deliver extra appointments.

Dr Kieran Sharrock, acting chair of the BMA’s GP committee for England, said: “Unless general practices are given time, investment and support to deliver their core services, they are just being set up to fail, with the growing problems in workforce numbers and infrastructure that we have acting as barriers that will prevent effective change from happening.”

Beccy Baird, of the King’s Fund, said: “Experienced GPs, who are already overstretched are vital to this effort, and so providing funding to free up some of their time to lead change efforts is welcome. The idea that community pharmacies will be able to offer more clinical services to patients has long been the direction of travel so it’s good to see investment in this. However, not all pharmacies will be able to offer these services and it will be really frustrating for patients to be bumped from pillar to post, only to end up back at the GP. Local areas will need to think very carefully about how they communicate which services are available where and to whom.
With demand massively outweighing capacity, whether the proposals will be radical enough to turn things around in the real world, remains to be seen.”

Jake Beech, from the Health Foundation, said: “Today’s plan includes some positive steps towards improving access to primary care but falls well short of addressing the fundamental issues affecting general practice. It is vitally important that people are able to see an appropriate clinician when they need to but the fact remains that there are not enough GPs to meet patient demand.”

Health Secretary Steve Barclay told MPs: “We are making huge investments in our primary care workforce, and are on track to meet the manifesto commitment of 26,000 more primary care staff by next March, meaning that we have more pharmacists, physios and paramedics delivering appointments in primary care than ever before. In 2021, we hit our target of 4,000 people accepting GP training places, and our upcoming NHS workforce plan will set out how we will further expand GP training. As well as freeing up more staff time, our plan cuts bureaucracy, too, so that GPs spend less time on paperwork and more time caring for patients. We will remove unnecessary targets, improve communication between GPs and hospitals, and reduce the amount of non-GP work that GPs are being asked to do.”