Government claims to have met pledge to create 50 million more GP appointments

The Government has claimed to have met its pledge to create 50 million more GP appointments a year by 2024/25.

Former health secretary Matt Hancock announced in November 2019 a pledge to recruit 6,000 new doctors to general practice and create 50 million more GP appointments a year by 2024/25.

The Government said that data published today by NHS England shows that for the year to October 2023, there were 358 million general practice appointments (including Covid-19 vaccinations) – 50.9 million more that in the year up to October 2019.

However, the Government is unlikely to fulfil its election pledge to recruit 6,000 additional full-time equivalent GPs by 2025 – the number currently of fully qualified, FTE GPs last month was 27,368, compared to 28,129 in December 2019.

Health secretary Victoria Atkins said: ‘We owe a debt of gratitude to all the staff working in general practices for their support and commitment to their patients and for achieving the target of 50 million additional appointments months ahead of schedule.

‘Our Primary Care Recovery Plan is going even further with more appointments, more staff and greater support from pharmacies – backed by funding – meaning we can offer the primary care patients need.’

RCGP vice chair Dr Victoria Tzortziou-Brown said that the figures published by NHS England show that general practice ‘remains in a precarious position’, and that ‘immediate action’ is needed to continue meeting the health needs of patients which are growing in both volume and complexity.

She added: ‘GPs and their teams delivered over 37 million appointments in October, all with 761 fewer fully qualified, full-time GPs than in December 2019.

‘This is an increase of over 6 million appointments from the number delivered in October 2019, the equivalent to over 218,000 appointments per day.

‘The average number of patients per GP in England is now an eye watering 2,294. General practice relies on teams, with both clinical and non-clinical staff, led by GPs, working incredibly hard to ensure patients receive the care they need, but the data speaks for itself, this is becoming increasingly unsustainable.

‘If we’re going to turn this situation around, we’re going to need to see significant investment in general practice, and efforts ramped up to increase the GP workforce, especially into keeping the GPs we already have, in the profession for longer.’

Primary care minister Andrea Leadsom, said the figures ‘clearly demonstrate’ that more people are getting the care they need, when they need it.

She said: ‘Thank you so much to GPs and primary care teams up and down the country for their tireless work to care for patients which saw around 32,500 more appointments delivered every day.

‘While this is positive news, we know that there is more to do to make it easier and quicker for patients to contact their general practice and continue to focus on delivering the primary care recovery plan.’

Earlier this year, the Government published its primary care recovery plan, including £240m of funding for practices in England to ‘embrace the latest technology’, modern telephony systems and a major expansion of the role of receptionists to become expert ‘care navigators’, as well as enabling patients to get prescription medicine directly from pharmacists without the need for a GP appointment for seven common conditions.