Experts have warned that groundbreaking NHS plans to tackle staff shortages will see the country need “thousands more” family doctors because they will employ just one GP for every 24 hospital consultants.
The British Association of General Practitioners has written to Wes Streeting to protest what it says are gross imbalances that threaten one of the new government’s key aims for the NHS.
In a letter, the college’s president, Prof Camilla Hawthorn, said the “meager” numbers of GPs the NHS in England is aiming to recruit through its long-term workforce planning are too few to meet health and social care ministers’ promises to expand outpatient care.
When the plan was announced last year, it was widely praised for setting out a strategy to double the number of doctors in the country and nearly double the national supply of nurses by 2031.
Under the plans, the number of consultants is set to rise 49% from 54,800 to 81,600 by 2037/38, an increase of 26,800, the Auditor General’s analysis shows. But the number of fully qualified GPs is set to rise just 4% from 27,800 to 28,900 in 2021, an increase of just 1,100.
Labour has promised to end long waits to see a GP, but Mr Hawthorn said the situation would continue unless the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) urgently reviewed its plans and dramatically increased the number of GPs.
“Thousands of our people are desperately needed on the NHS frontline delivering patient care, which is why we are extremely concerned that current projections in the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan show only a small increase in the number of full-time fully qualified GPs over the next 10 to 12 years, particularly when compared with hospital doctors.
“We need more doctors across the board, but the new government has made clear its ambition to move more care out of hospitals and into the community.”
“It therefore makes no sense that the number of hospital consultants is growing significantly whilst the number of qualified GPs remains stagnant,” she added.
The letter, signed by a total of 9,657 GPs, warned Dr Streeting that unless he revises his plans to ensure that the numbers of hospital doctors and GPs are roughly equal, “general practices, which are already chronically understaffed, will be left completely ill-prepared to meet the growing needs of patients”.
The move by GPs comes amid growing concern among other staff groups that long-term workforce planning may not increase the country’s supply of health workers as dramatically as intended.
last week, The UK College of Nursing has warned Applications for nursing degrees have “fallen sharply” by 27% over the past three years – a drop so large it raises the risk that the plan’s target of increasing the number of nursing students by 92% by 2031/32 will not be met.
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It urged ministers to offer greater financial incentives to reverse the trend, such as gradual student loan forgiveness, to prevent the scheme from “straying further and irretrievably off target”.
The previous government was criticised in February for scaling back plans to double the number of medical school graduates from 7,500 to 15,000 by 2031, by cutting admissions places to 350 for 2025/26 – less than a quarter of the number that medical schools and doctors’ associations believe is needed to ensure the doubling happens.
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesman said: “Training and retaining talented NHS staff is central to our mission to build a health service fit for the future.”
“This Government is committed to cutting the bureaucracy that ties up GPs’ time and restoring family medicine, so patients can easily book an appointment with their GP.”
“We will train 1,000 more GPs and shift the focus of healthcare from hospitals to the community.”
