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NEWS: GP leader calls for end of ‘excuses’

NewsThe British Medical Association GP committee chair has called for the government to end a decade of “excuses” and fund general practice properly.

Dr Richard Vautrey, who was speaking at the annual meeting local medical committees (LMCs) in Liverpool, said while doctors work hard and want to do all they can to help patients, the gaps in the NHS system mean they are being exploited.

“With shift systems and rota gaps in hospitals, and a recruitment crisis and unsustainable rise in consultation rates and workload in general practice, doctors today, old and young, in hospital and in the community, are being exploited by a system that relies on their goodwill, commitment and toleration of the unacceptable,” he said.

“But it is unacceptable, and we should call it what it is: it’s dangerous, leads to patients being put at risk and it cannot go on.”

He said although in some parts of the UK, commissioners realise that there is a real need to invest in general practice and community-based services, doctors hear “fine words but little action”.

“In England the NHS’s revenue will grow by just over £2bn in the coming year, and yet despite the rhetoric the vast majority of that will be spent in hospitals and far too little in the community,” he said.

“If general practice fails, it will not be because we failed to warn those who could make a difference. The time to act is now.”

He called for every GP practice to invest in pharmacists who will not only help reduce workload pressures in practices but also help to reduce untoward incidents from medicine-related errors.

“It seems self-evident that every practice in the UK should have the support of a pharmacist as part of their team,” he said.

“It’s part of the plans in Scotland and some enlightened CCGs in England have been working to do the same, using recurrent funding from CCG budgets to supplement the short term and inadequate funding in the GP Forward View scheme. Every hospital ward has a linked pharmacist, it’s about time every practice had one, too.”

There also needs to be better mental health provision, he said.

Despite practices dealing with a rising need from their patients with mental health problems, access to IAPT and other talking therapies is becoming more difficult to access, he said.

“Patients are waiting months on end before they can access the care they need but we know too that mental health services are impacted by the same problems as GPs, with too few staff with too little resource trying to do the best they can for too many people,” he said.

“We need the promised 3,000 additional therapists in England and more besides, but we also need them linked to our practices. We need to be rebuilding the primary care team in and around our practices.”

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