Pulse’s alternative election manifesto, voted for by GPs, calls for more respect and an end to workload dump onto GP practices from other areas of the health service.
The two demands have come out top amid 20 ideas for the next Government that were put to over 400 GPs voting via the Pulse website in the run-up to next week’s general election.
In all, 87% of GPs said they want the next Government to make a promise to ‘stop disparaging general practice and work with the profession to make it more attractive for new GPs’.
GPs would also like whoever is successful on 7 May to ‘define core services for general practice’, with 84% supporting the idea which would aim to ‘prevent more and more work being dumped on practices’.
Another five of the ideas proposed received support from more than three quarters of GPs, and were in declining order:
- Allocate an additional 1% of the NHS budget to general practice immediately and keep increasing the proportion of resources put into the community (supported by 83%);
- Actively support GPs in saying ‘no’ to work that is not within their contract (78%);
- Remove all restrictions on consultants referring within their own hospital to help stop them bouncing patients back to GPs (78%);
- Invest in primary care to allow 15-minute appointments as a minimum (75%);
- And, finally, to launch an honest public debate about what the priorities of the NHS should be and how its finite resources should be allocated.
Pulse has sent this list of simple, easy-to-implement reforms to the main political parties, urging that they be implemented if they reach office.
