Dear Sir Greg Knight and Mr Graham Stuart,
When you welcome the Secretary of State for Health on Friday, we would be very grateful if you could impress on him the fact that he is coming to an area whose GPs are facing an unprecedented crisis which, if not resolved quickly, has the potential to destabilise the entire NHS and leave large sections of our population without a family doctor.
We believe that we have been caught in a perfect storm of rising demand, caused by population change, advances in medicine, and the moving of care out of hospitals. This has happened at the same time as a funding squeeze, with primary care’s slice of total NHS funding being reduced from 10.4% to 7.4%.
GPs have tried to protect their patients from the impact of these cuts, and as a result have seen a rise in workload along with a real-terms pay decrease of 25% since 2006, but this cannot continue any longer. The serious financial uncertainty is preventing investment in practices and dissuading young doctors from becoming GPs, as well as causing those who can retire or go overseas to do so. This places increasing burdens on the remaining GPs, 93% of whom report that heavy workload undermines the quality of care that they can give.
GPs love our work, but many of us hate our jobs, which have been made impossible to do well
Over recent years there has been a huge rise in regulations and paperwork, with the demands of the CQC, the revalidation process, repeated reorganisations, and the nonsense of competitive tendering for services all taking us away from our patients. Where investment has been forthcoming, it is often so complex to obtain or short-lived that the final benefits are negligible, or confined to a few practices.
Although these issues are national, East Yorkshire’s geography makes us particularly sensitive to these difficulties, with services in Bridlington being particularly vulnerable. We are all facing huge problems recruiting new GPs with many practices having unfilled vacancies, and over half the places on the local GP training scheme remain unfilled.
We have a simple message for politicians and patients. GPs love our work, but many of us hate our jobs, which have been made impossible to do well. We hate being rushed, we hate not having enough time for those patients who need us, we hate worrying about making mistakes, and we hate not being able to afford the staff or premises we need to provide great care. If you are serious about addressing the crisis in general practice and encouraging more young doctors to choose to be GPs you need to act now, before it is too late. Please cut our paperwork, invest properly in general practice, address unsafe workload pressures, and prioritise high quality urgent out-of-hours GP care rather than wasting resources on routine Sunday services which studies have shown are not wanted.
Above all, please listen to GPs when we say that general practices are the foundations on which the rest of the NHS is built, but without proper support, protection, and investment we will not be able to provide the care that your constituents deserve.
Yours Sincerely (random order)
Dr Mike Hardman
Dr Paul Longden
Dr Guy Clayton
Dr Tanya Web
Dr Janette Robson
Dr Allen Stephen
Dr Clive Henderson
Dr Daniel Thompson
Dr Helen Heaton
Dr Priya Reddy
Dr Jessica Airey
Dr Andrew Green
Dr Sree Reddy
Dr Louise Cooke
Dr Alan Francis
Dr Jaap Vermeijden
Dr Suzanne Partridge
Dr Sivarajan Krishnarjav
Dr Zoe Norris
D Susie Foster
Dr Louise Brotherton
Dr Jane Taylor
Dr Paul Davis
Dr Michel Morgan
Dr Richard Taylor
Dr Roger Doonan
Dr Susan Murphy
Dr Julian Clark
Dr Stephen Pedder-Smith
Dr Graham Heaton
Dr Chris Chant
Dr Paul Harris
Dr Margaret Ikpoh
Dr Sam Koshy
Dr Helen Rhodes
Dr Stephanie Mason
Dr Gareth Williams
Dr Joanne Walters
Dr Nigel Pickering
Dr Ian Sibley-Calder
Dr Patrick Naughton-Doe
Dr Richard Kurtis
Dr Anne Jeffreys
Dr Laurent Bare
Dr Anjani Kallay
Dr Harminder Suri
Dr Philip George
Dr Mark Hancocks
Dr Martin Russell
Dr Naila Loqueman
Dr James Cooling
Dr Lorna Eele
Dr Robert Mitchell
Dr Joanne Myers
Dr Mary Sowerby
Dr Tami Byass
Dr Noel Tinker
Dr Ian Bell
Dr Jonathon Martin
Dr Stephen Hickey
Dr Philip Mixer
Dr Robert Blackbourn
Dr Dafydd Williams
Dr Ric Harrison
Dr Jane Stephenson
Dr Andrew Brews
Dr Christopher Buswell
Dr Anthony Clarke
Dr Victoria Thompson
Dr Sara Saunders
Dr David Turpin
Dr Ruth Driver
Dr Nicole Nunn
Dr Gina Palumbo
Dr Cornelio Vincini
Dr Paul Phillips
Dr Michael Roberts
