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Found 133 results
  1. Content Article
    A patient participation group (PPG) is a group of people who are patients of a GP surgery and want to help it work as well as it can for patients, doctors and staff. The NHS requires every practice to have a PPG. In this blog, Alan Bellinger reflects on what he has learned during his time as chair of his GP surgery's PPG, highlighting three key lessons: Be collaborative not combative If patients don’t engage with the PPG it’s your fault for not being engaging Never lose sight of the value-add you create for the practice
  2. News Article
    GPs are attempting to deal with up to 3,000 patients each, amid worsening staff shortages, according to new analysis. The research shows that the number of patients per GP has risen sharply, as rising numbers of doctors reduce their hours, or opt for early retirement. Daisy Cooper, spokeswoman for Liberal Democrat Health and Social Care, said: “This ever-worsening GP shortage is having a terrible human cost, as people face delayed or missed diagnoses and A&Es fill up with desperate patients looking for treatment." Read full story (paywalled) Source: Telegraph, 14 February
  3. News Article
    Almost one in four people have bought medicine online or at a pharmacy to treat their illness after failing to see a GP face to face, according to a UK survey underlining the rise of do-it-yourself treatment. Nearly one in five (19%) have gone to A&E seeking urgent medical treatment for the same reason, the research commissioned by the Liberal Democrats shows. One in six (16%) people agreed when asked by the pollsters Savanta ComRes if the difficulty of getting an in-person family doctor appointment meant they had “carried out medical treatment on yourself or asked somebody else who is not a medical professional to do so”. Ed Davey, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, said delays and difficulty in accessing GP appointments constituted a national scandal, and face-to-face GP appointments had become “almost extinct” in some areas of the country. He said: “We now have the devastating situation where people are left treating themselves or even self-prescribing medication because they can’t see their local GP.” Dr Richard Van Mellaerts, the deputy chair of the British Medical Association’s GP committee in England, said: “While self-care and consulting other services such as pharmacies and NHS 111 will often be the right thing to do for many minor health conditions, it is worrying if patients feel forced into inappropriate courses of action because they are struggling to book an appointment for an issue that requires the attention of a GP or a member of practice staff.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 2 January 2024
  4. News Article
    A GP surgery accidentally told patients they had aggressive lung cancer instead of wishing them a merry Christmas. Askern Medical Practice sent the text message to people registered with the surgery in Doncaster on 23 December. Sarah Hargreaves, who was waiting for medical test results, said she "broke down" when she received the text, only to be later told it was sent in error. The first text told recipients they had "aggressive lung cancer with metastases", a type of secondary malignant growth. It directed patients to fill out a DS1500 form, which allows people with terminal diseases to claim certain benefits. However, about an hour later people received a second text telling them it was an error and it was meant to wish them a merry Christmas instead. Read full story Source: BBC News, 29 December 2022
  5. News Article
    Five million people were unable to book a GP appointment in October, analysis of NHS data suggests. The Labour party, which studied figures from the GP Patient Survey, warned the struggle to see a doctor will mean many patients will not have serious medical conditions diagnosed until it is “too late”. According to the survey, some 13.8% of patients, or around one in seven, did not get an appointment the last time they tried to book one. With almost 32 million GP appointments reported in England in October, the party said it means that more than 5 million people could have been unable to book a GP appointment when they tried to make one that month. October saw GP surgeries carry out the highest number of appointments since records began in 2017, despite a depleted work force. Labour’s shadow health secretary Wes Streeting told Labour List: “Patients are finding it impossible to get a GP appointment when they need one. I’m really worried that among those millions of patients unable to get an appointment, there could be serious conditions going undiagnosed until it’s too late". Professor Kamila Hawthorne, chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners, said in a statement: “GPs and their teams are working flat out to deliver the care and services our patients need. GPs want our patients to receive timely and appropriate care, and we share their frustrations when this isn’t happening. But difficulties accessing our services isn’t the fault of GP teams, it’s a consequence of an under-resourced, underfunded, and understaffed service working under unsustainable pressures.” Read full story Source: The Independent, 6 December 2022
  6. News Article
    Plans have been drawn up to avoid the NHS being overwhelmed this winter by encouraging patients to “behave in ways they’ve not experienced before” and cut down on in-person GP visits, the Guardian can reveal. An advertising campaign devised by M&C Saatchi, awarded a contract by NHS England worth up to £28.6m, suggested ways people could be encouraged to settle for a virtual appointment or visit a pharmacist instead. To help reduce the mounting pressures facing medics, documents show the agency also advised patients should be told that seeking help via alternative routes instead of rushing to A&E would help the NHS “work better for everyone”. The three-year contract is for the ad campaign “Help Us Help You”, which seeks to change people’s behaviour when accessing healthcare to reduce pressures on the NHS and maintain capacity. Wes Streeting, Labour’s shadow health secretary, said patients were already cutting back on in-person GP appointments – “not because they don’t need them but they’re finding it impossible to get one”. He told the Guardian: “Among those millions of patients who can’t get an appointment when they need it, there will be problems which go undiagnosed until it’s too late". Read full story Source: The Guardian, 30 November 2022
  7. Content Article
    This study in the journal Health and Social Care Delivery Research aimed to assess the scale, scope and impact of changing the type and number of different healthcare practitioners in general practice in England. The authors undertook an analysis of employment trends, looked at motivations behind employment decisions, examined staff and patient experiences, and assessed how skill mix changes are associated with outcome measures and costs. They found that: employing clinicians who are not GPs did not reduce GPs’ workload or improve their job satisfaction. patients appreciated the longer appointments they had with other clinicians. patients wanted better information about what other practitioners can do, and how to use new booking systems.
  8. News Article
    GPs are struggling to cope with as many as 90 appointments and consultations a day – more than three times a recommended safety limit. General practices in England are carrying out more appointments than before the pandemic but face severe workforce shortages. More than 1.45 million patients waited at least 28 days to see a GP in September, according to the most recent NHS figures. GPs who spoke to the Observer last week say that almost every day they breach the BM) guideline of “not more than 25 contacts per day” to deliver safe care. One doctor said he had more than 90 consultations on one day. A conference of local medical committee representatives in England this week will highlight the growing pressures faced in general practice. Surgeries are being urged to impose stricter caps on the number of patient appointments for each GP. One of the proposed motions submitted to the conference by Kensington and Chelsea local medical committee says “focusing on patient safety” is more appropriate than meeting high patient demand. It says the NHS should focus on “safe capacity”. Such a move would mean longer waits for GP appointments, but doctors say it would help safeguard patient care and the welfare of staff in general practice. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 20 November 2022
  9. News Article
    GP surgeries across Scotland are at risk of collapsing because of staff shortages and increased demand, a senior doctor has warned. Dr Andrew Buist, chairman of the British Medical Association's (BMA) Scottish GP committee, told the BBC many practices were at "tipping point". More than a third of surveyed surgeries reported at least one GP vacancy – up from just over a quarter last year. About half of the GP surgeries in Scotland took part in the BMA survey. It showed 81% of practices said demand was exceeding capacity - with 42% saying demand substantially exceeded capacity. Dr Buist told BBC Scotland: "I worry that we're reaching a tipping point for some practices. "They lose one or maybe two doctors out of three, and the remaining doctors cannot continue so they return the contract and the practice may cease to exist. "That is a real concern in some parts of Scotland that that is happening and it's going to happen increasingly as the situation develops over this winter." Read full story Source: BBC News, 15 November 2022
  10. Content Article
    Mike Fell, executive director of national cybersecurity operations at NHS Digital,, discusses the WannaCry cyberattack, teaching GP surgeries to up their game and how data can save lives.
  11. Community Post
    It's rare that I post personal information of any kind on a website such as this, but this really irked me so felt it was worth sharing. Context: I've been an Asthma sufferer since the age of 3 years old. I know exactly how to manage my condition having had it for over 50 years, and have always used a blue ventolin inhaler as and when necessary (perhaps once every 2-3 months). I have not had any serious issues with my Asthma for at least 20 years, and then only in Hayfever season. Issue: I only renew my inhaler when it expires, every 2 years or so. Therefore it is not listed on my repeat medications list. My most recent one had just run out, so I needed a replacement. Action: I emailed the GP's website as I knew I was meant to, and received an automated email back saying that I would receive a response within 5 working days. So far so good. Response: I received another email response 2 days later (pretty good!) saying that the GP would have to call me to run through why I needed a new inhaler. GP call: The GP rang on the set day and within the allocated time window and started asking me how often I used the inhaler, for what, and did I really need that or the preventative one (which I've had before). At the end of our 10 minute call, she agreed that I just needed a replacement blue ventolin inhaler, as I had asked for in the first place. What a waste of the GP's time, and mine!! It made me think that it would be a helpful thing if certain patients with decades of experience in managing their condition(s) in a very stable way could be classed as 'expert patients' on their GP record. This could save a huge amount of wasted time on both sides!! This blog post first appeared on Linkedin on 30 October 2022. I will post some of the responses to it below for added insight.
  12. News Article
    Thousands of doctors are being prevented from working in overstretched GP surgeries across the UK because of unnecessary “red tape”, leaving NHS patients experiencing “unprecedented” waits for care, the head of the doctors’ regulator in the UK has said. Charlie Massey, the chief executive of the General Medical Council, said barriers that stopped medics from being deployed to meet areas of high demand, such as in primary care, must be removed urgently if the NHS workforce crisis was to be resolved and access to care improved. “Red tape is stopping the UK from making the most of many of its skilled and experienced doctors,” he said. “Without action, patients will suffer.” The regulator will on Tuesday call for a relaxation of rules so the fastest-growing part of the medical workforce – skilled doctors in non-training roles – can undertake a wider range of work beyond hospitals, such as in GP surgeries. “There are no easy answers to the challenges facing the NHS. There is no army of new doctors coming over the horizon, so part of the solution must be to make sure that we have more doctors in the places that patients need them,” Massey said. “The government should make a start immediately by changing the performers list criteria so more doctors are allowed to work alongside GPs. That needs to be done urgently. “But beyond technical changes there is also a need for fresh thinking in the way our health services are structured and in how teams of health professionals work together. We can’t keep doing things the same way they have always been done, or nothing will change." Read full story Source: BBC News, 18 October 2022
  13. Content Article
    Acute prescribing forms a large part of the daily workload for GP practices. Quality improvement (QI) methodology can be used to help improve prescribing processes and ensure that prescribing work is managed by the right member of your team, safely and effectively. This toolkit is designed to help primary care multidisciplinary teams, including pharmacotherapy services, safely improve their acute prescribing processes in line with the Essentials of Safe Care. An acute prescription is defined as any prescription without a serial or repeat mandate.
  14. News Article
    NHS bosses have been told to make sure patients can access care if GPs close on the day of the Queen's funeral. NHS England has written to local bosses saying while GP services will be able to close on the bank holiday there needs to be enough out-of-hours care. The letter also asked for scheduled Covid booster care home visits to be carried out as planned. In another letter to hospitals NHS England said it expected a rise in patients not turning up for clinics. There have been reports of some hospitals in England and other parts of the UK cancelling routine treatments due to take place on the day of the funeral too. The letter addressing GP access, signed by NHS England's director of primary care Dr Ursula Montgomery, said GP practices would be contractually able to close their core services on Monday as its a confirmed bank holiday. But it added local health boards would need to "urgently work to ensure sufficient out-of-hours services capacity is in place". The letter also said areas must make up for cancelled appointments by offering patients another appointment within two weeks and make sure patients can pick up prescriptions in advance. Read full story Source: BBC News, 12 September 2022
  15. News Article
    Nearly 1.5 million patients have lost their GP in the last eight years after the closure of almost 500 practices, research has suggested. Issues around recruitment were a factor in the closure of about two-fifths of the surgeries, while workloads and inadequate premises were also cited as triggers. The investigation, by Pulse magazine, revealed for the first time the number of premises that have closed for good since 2013. Previously, research has identified the number of practices where GP partners have returned their contracts, or certain branches have closed or merged with others. Prof Martin Marshall, the chairman of the Royal College of GPs, said: “The impact of a practice closing on its patients and neighbouring practices can be considerable. As such, a decision to close a practice will be one of the most difficult a GP partner can make. When the reason for closing a practice is workload pressures, and not being able to fill vacancies, then this needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Telegraph (29 August 2022)
  16. News Article
    An LMC has created template letters to help practices reject secondary care workload dumping, including rejected referrals and requests to complete work on behalf of hospital trusts. Cambridge LMC said it developed the tools amid a growing ‘tsunami’ of secondary care workload transfer into general practices. One template letter tackles the rejection of a referral ‘on the basis that a proforma was not enclosed or completed in full’. It points out that the GMC requires GPs to refer when they ‘believe it is necessary to do so’ and that their ‘contractual obligations make no mention of a requirement to complete a proforma’. Cambridgeshire LMC chief executive Dr Katie Bramall-Stainer told Pulse that ‘we need the temperature to rise on the understanding around pressures across general practice’. Read full story For more information on the issues raised, read a blog by Patient Safety Learning about the patient safety risks of rejected outpatient referrals. Source: Pulse (19 August 2022)
  17. News Article
    Patients are increasingly avoiding seeing their GP because they find it too difficult to book an appointment, the latest data show. Results from the 2022 GP Patient Survey also show that satisfaction with family doctors in England has dwindled since the previous year. The findings come as the Government and the NHS struggle to retain GPs and boost recruitment to meet rising patient demand and an ageing population. The survey found that overall satisfaction ratings have declined over the past 2 years, although most patients who responded to a questionnaire reported a good overall experience with their GP practice, had confidence and trust in the healthcare professional who saw them, and considered they received good care and treatment. The results also revealed an increase in the barriers patients faced in getting an appointment in the first place, with 55.4% who needed one in the last 12 months saying they had avoided making one – an increase of 13.1% since the last survey. The most common reason given was that they found it too difficult, cited by 26.5% of respondents, and a huge increase on last year's figure of 11.1%. Commenting on the results, Beccy Baird, senior fellow at The King's Fund said: "For many of us, general practice is the front door to the NHS – these results show that patients are finding that door increasingly hard to push open. "GPs are working harder than ever before, yet these findings show a dramatic fall in patients' experience of getting an appointment." She said recruitment of GPs, nurses, and other professionals to meet rising levels of need was proving tough "because in many cases those staff simply don’t exist". Read full story Source: Medscape, 14 July 2022
  18. Content Article
    The GP Patient Survey (GPPS) is an England-wide survey of patients aged 16+. It provides GP practice-level data about patients’ experiences of general practice.
  19. News Article
    Polling by the Royal College of General Practice (RCGP) as part of a campaign to make NHS GP services sustainable for the future found that 42% of 1,262 GPs and trainees who took part said they were likely to quit the profession in the next five years. A workforce exodus on this scale would strip the health service of nearly 19,000 of the roughly 45,000 headcount GPs and GP trainees currently working in general practice. RCGP chair Professor Martin Marshall warned that general practice was a profession in crisis - with the intensity and complexity of GP workload rising as the workforce continued to shrink. He warned that 'alarming' findings from the RCGP poll must serve as a stark warning to politicians and NHS leaders over the urgent need for solutions to begin to tackle the crisis facing general practice. Four in five respondents told the RCGP they expect working in general practice to get worse over the next few years - while only 6% expected things to improve. Nearly two in five respondents said GP practice premises are not fit for purpose, and one in three said IT for booking systems is not good enough. Professor Marshall said: 'What our members are telling us about working on the frontline of general practice is alarming. General practice is significantly understaffed, underfunded, and overworked and this is impacting on the care and services we’re able to deliver to patients. Read full story Source: GP, 22 June 2022
  20. News Article
    The UK's biggest chain of GP practices lets less qualified staff see patients without adequate supervision, an undercover BBC Panorama investigation has found. Operose Health is putting patients at risk by prioritising profit, says a senior GP. The company, with almost 600,000 NHS patients, is owned by US healthcare giant Centene Corporation. BBC Panorama sent undercover reporter Jacqui Wakefield to work as a receptionist at one of the UK company's 51 London surgeries. A GP working at the practice said they were short of eight doctors. The practice manager said they hired less qualified medical staff called physician associates (PAs), because they were "cheaper" than GPs. Physician associates were first introduced by the NHS in 2003, so that doctors could deal with more complex patient needs. PAs are healthcare professionals who have completed two years of post-graduate studies on top of a science degree, as opposed to 10 years education and training for GPs. They support GPs in the diagnosis and management of patients, but should have oversight from a doctor. Panorama gathered evidence that PAs were not being properly supervised at the Operose practice. The PAs told the undercover reporter they saw all sorts of patients, sometimes without any clinical supervision. They said the practice treated them as equivalent to GPs. Prof Sir Sam Everington, a senior practising GP at an unconnected partner-run practice, reviewed BBC Panorama's undercover footage and said he was concerned for patient safety. During the undercover investigation at the London practice, administrative workers also revealed a backlog of thousands of medical test results and hospital letters on Operose computer systems. One worker said they were tasked with getting through 200 documents a day, deciding which were important enough to be seen by a GP or pharmacist and which would be filed to the patient's records. One member of staff, worried about making mistakes said they sometimes used Google to help them work out what to do with the documents. Read full story Source: BBC News, 11 June 2022
  21. News Article
    A GP surgery that provides treatment to about 5,600 patients has been placed in special measures by a regulator. London Street Surgery, in Reading, Berkshire, was found to have "significant backlogs of test results and care-related tasks". The Care Quality Commission (CQC) found there was "poor identification of risks to patients" during an inspection in April. The surgery has been approached for comment. The regulator rated the surgery's safety and leadership as inadequate, and said it had insufficient processes to ensure services' safety and effectiveness. Repeat prescriptions and medicines were "not managed safely", which could have posed risks to patients, and there were "risks associated" with the storage of blank prescriptions, it found. Staff training was "not monitored appropriately" and inspectors found patients with learning disabilities were not provided with health checks to make sure their wellbeing was properly monitored. Read full story Source: BBC News, 7 June 2022
  22. News Article
    Criminal acts of violence at GP surgeries across the UK have almost doubled in five years, new figures reveal, as doctors’ leaders warn of a perfect storm of soaring demand and staff shortages. Police are now recording an average of three violent incidents at general practices every day. Staff are facing unprecedented assaults, abuse and aggression by patients, with surgeries struggling to cope with “unmanageable levels of demand” after years of failure to recruit or retain sufficient numbers of family doctors. Security measures such as CCTV, panic buttons and screens at reception are now increasingly being rolled out across GP surgeries, the Guardian has learned, with senior medics claiming ministers perpetuate a myth that services are “closed”. Last night, Britain’s two most senior doctors condemned the wave of violence and called for urgent action to finally resolve the workforce crisis. “It is unacceptable that GPs and their staff are afraid and at risk of being verbally or physically abused, when they are working amid exceptional pressures and striving to do their best for patients,” said Dr Chaand Nagpaul, chair of the British Medical Association. “GP practices are facing unmanageable levels of demand with 2,000 fewer GPs than in 2015.” He added it was “no surprise” that patients were struggling to get appointments because of the national “lack of capacity” and “lack of historic investment in general practice”. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 31 May 2022
  23. News Article
    Proposals for primary care networks to evolve into more collaborative “integrated neighbourhood teams” to improve access to care have been broadly welcomed. A “stocktake” report commissioned by NHS England, published on 26 May, called for urgent same day appointments to be dealt with by “single, urgent care teams” for every neighbourhood with greater use of a range of health and social care professionals. The report, written by Claire Fuller, a general practitioner and chief executive of Surrey Heartlands Integrated Care System, undertaken by Dr Claire Fuller, Chief Executive-designate Surrey Heartlands Integrated Care System and GP on integrated primary care, looks at what is working well, why it’s working well and how we can accelerate the implementation of integrated primary care (incorporating the current 4 pillars of general practice, community pharmacy, dentistry and optometry) across systems. Doctors’ leaders welcomed many of the report’s recommendations but emphasised that they could only work if the government resourced primary care practices better and tackled workforce shortages. Read full story (paywalled) Source: BMJ, 27 May 2022
  24. Content Article
    This is the final report of the stocktake undertaken by Dr Claire Fuller, Chief Executive-designate Surrey Heartlands Integrated Care System and GP on integrated primary care, looking at what is working well, why it’s working well and how we can accelerate the implementation of integrated primary care (incorporating the current 4 pillars of general practice, community pharmacy, dentistry and optometry) across systems.
  25. Content Article
    Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF) might be back this month – but for practices the work never went away, practices managers have told Management in Practice. NHS England announced the resumption of the payments system last December after QOF was part-suspended in 2021/22 to free up time for Covid vaccinations. But while the QOF system was on hold, many practices have carried on with QOF targets throughout the pandemic, continuing to measure their performance against these indicators.. Now the programme has officially returned, despite concerns that the system does not take into account the significant impact of the pandemic on long-term conditions, and could financially penalise practices. Practice managers are, once again, having to get to grips with targets, and needing to organise appointments for patients most in need of a face-to-face review, while dealing with day-to-day work pressures and staff shortages. Here practice managers share their thoughts on the comeback of QOF, what it will mean for them and their practices, and whether its return is too much, too soon.
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