General practice in Northern Ireland is now in its “most difficult position ever,” a major summit has heard.

Practices are having back contracts in the face of financial and staffing pressures and rising patient needs, the region’s conference of local medical committees heard.

Dr Alan Stout, who has been chair of the British Medical Association’s GP committee in the region for six years, told how a plan was published to rescue general practice at the time he took over.

He said: “Not only have all the predictions in the plan relating to us being on a burning platform come true, but the actions proposed are still all the correct ones, they have just not been actioned. Front and centre of these was building a strong, well-staffed foundation in Primary Care; this would be vital to everything we tried to do in the future, be it elective care, urgent care, out of hospital care, early discharge, preventative medicine, population health, the list goes on and on. Instead, we have seen the collapse and the struggles we are all too familiar with. We can never be surprised when we see the crises.”

He told the region’s GPs: “We all know the key things that need addressed and my goodness we have tried. We have created our plan to save General Practice, we have our options paper which remains dynamic, and we have recently released our safety paper in a desperate attempt to keep our colleagues and our patients safe in the current environment.

“Unfortunately, we have seen no movement on any of these key actions and this has resulted in a very clear mandate at our last Northern Ireland GP committee meeting, with a unanimous vote to urgently start work on a new contract. This is not without risk, it may be negotiated but we have to be prepared that it may not be, and it has to provide safety, to value what is currently being delivered but be massively simpler than the current contract which just simply isn’t working for our GP’s and our practices.”