Patient need continues to outstrip GP resources

College Honorary Secretary Michael Mulholland responds to the latest analysis of the British Social Attitudes survey by The King's Fund and Nuffield Trust.

Dr Michael Mulholland, Honorary Secretary of the Royal College of GPs, said: “It is always troubling to hear that patients are dissatisfied with general practice, and the NHS more widely – particularly as other recent surveys and metrics have indicated that satisfaction with GP services, including access to them, is steadily improving.

“The unfortunate reality is that patient need for GP care and services continues to outstrip the resources available to us to deliver it. GPs and our teams are now delivering more appointments than ever before - 367 million last year, more than a million per day – and increasingly complex care, but with just a handful more qualified GPs than in 2019. The results of this survey demonstrate how nonsensical it is that many GPs are reporting being unable to find work when there is such clear patient need for GP care.

“We know how much our patients value the care GP teams provide, and it’s as frustrating for us as it is for them when they report struggling to access it. This is the result of longstanding failures in funding and workforce planning – and it’s encouraging to see that the public recognises this, and that they want to see the NHS prioritised for investment.

"General practice is the bedrock of the NHS, with GPs and our teams delivering the vast majority of patient contacts in the community where most patients want to be treated and care is more cost-effective. This is why we’ve supported the government’s aspirations to shift more care from hospitals into the community - but this will need to be matched with significant investment, and urgent efforts to recruit more GPs, retain the existing GP workforce, and ensure barriers to GP employment are identified and broken down.

“The forthcoming new 10-year Health Plan must be seen as an opportunity to do this; to allocate a much greater portion of the NHS budget to primary care so we can provide the service that our patients need.”

Further information

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Notes to editors

The Royal College of General Practitioners is a network of more than 54,000 family doctors working to improve care for patients. We work to encourage and maintain the highest standards of general medical practice and act as the voice of GPs on education, training, research and clinical standards.