Practices are facing the same post-holiday pressures as hospitals, many of which have declared critical incidents, a leading GP warned today.

About 200,000 people are day are being diagnosed with COVID infection as the Omicron variant takes hold. Estimates for staff absences across the NHS range from ten to 15%. Practices meanwhile must maintain care for nearly six million people on an NHS waiting list that is set to increase further after hospitals cancel elective procedures, according to Professor Martin Marshall, chair of the Royal College of GPs.

He spoke as MPs published a report today warning that staffing problems long pre-dated the pandemic. The MPs, on the House of Commons health committee, describe the problem of tacking the waiting list as “unquantifiable.”
General practice appointments fell by one third in early months of the pandemic, but MPs were told there were not enough GPs to meet the needs of an expanding ageing population with complex needs and to manage the fallout from the pandemic, the report says. High numbers of GPs were also leaving the profession, but in November, the Secretary of State told the committee that attempts to recruit 6,000 additional GPs by 2024 were not “on track”, the MPs found. The NHS Confederation, meanwhile, called for medical students to be deployed to help tackle the immediate staffing shortages.

Professor Marshall said: “The NHS backlog is impacting directly on the care of patients on waiting lists, as well as increasing pressure on all parts of the health service, not least general practice. Whilst patients are waiting for treatment or operations in secondary care, their health is under the care of GPs and our teams in the community. Current NHS pressures are not confined to hospitals. GPs and our teams have been at the forefront of delivering safe and appropriate care throughout the pandemic, ensuring patients receive the care and services they have needed whilst leading two complex mass vaccination programmes, and latterly the booster programme, in line with COVID restrictions.

“However, as serious and acute the problem of the COVID-related backlog is, the Committee is right in its report today that the key issues facing the NHS pre-date the pandemic. GPs and our teams were caring for patients under intense workload and workforce pressures before COVID, and the crisis has only exacerbated these. To this end, we welcome the Committee’s recommendation that robust workforce plans must be developed to keep general practice, and in turn the rest of the NHS, sustainable for the future. The Government promised 6,000 more GPs and 26,000 more members of the practice team and it needs to make good on this. Good progress has been made in recruiting new GPs to the profession – we need to see this replicated in keeping highly trained and experienced GPs in the profession, and this must start by tackling undoable workload. The relentless and escalating workload is taking its toll on the health and wellbeing of GPs and our teams, so we are also pleased to see the Committee’s recommendation that plans to address this will be developed and published as a matter of urgency.”

British Medical Association deputy chair Dr David Wrigley said: “We’re pleased to read how the Health and Social Care Committee has dismissed numerical target-driven approaches, which include setting targets for remote and face-to-face GP appointments. All doctors must be trusted to respond to individual patient need and not be driven by arbitrary bureaucracy. And our calls for honest communication and a commitment to keeping in touch with patients have also been heard, with the report stating that no patient should feel abandoned by the NHS, even if their waiting times are extremely long.”

Committee chair Jeremy Hunt said: “Far from tackling the backlog, the NHS will be able to deliver little more than day-to-day firefighting unless the Government wakes up to the scale of the staffing crisis facing the NHS, and urgently develops a long-term plan to fix the issue.”