Funding and focus must shift to general practice to revolutionise patient care

Responding to a new report from the King’s Fund calling for the rebalancing of NHS funding towards primary and community services, Professor Kamila Hawthorne, Chair of the Royal College of GPs, said:

“General practice is the bedrock of the NHS, the first port of call for most patients and where most NHS patients receive their care. Strong general practice that is properly funded, properly resourced, and properly supported can be the solution to so many of the problems currently besetting the NHS - we can keep people well close to home, prevent serious illness through early intervention, and help keep more people away from hospitals all together.

“But for too long governments have dealt with the incredible pressure across the whole of the NHS by directing the majority of funding into hospitals to tackle one crisis after another. We understand the pressures our hospital colleagues are under, but we greatly appreciate this recognition from the King’s Fund that we need to radically change this approach, and its timely recommendations for more focus and funding for primary care.

"For decades now GP and our teams having been doing more and more with less and less. Last month we delivered over 30 million appointments – over a million a day - all with a steadily shrinking portion of the NHS budget. But we can’t go on like this, our GPs and their teams are exhausted, too many patients are still waiting too long for care, and we certainly can’t deliver a revolution of care close to home when we can barely make ends meet as it is.

“We welcome the Government’s ambition to move more care into the community – it’s not only cost effective for the NHS and the taxpayer, it’s what patients want - but funding will need to follow. The forthcoming new 10-year Health Plan must allocate a much greater portion of the NHS budget to be spent on primary care if we are to resolve the GP workforce and workload crisis and rebuild our infrastructure so we can provide the safe and timely care our patients need and deserve .” 

Further information

RCGP press office: 0203 188 7659
press@rcgp.org.uk

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.