GPs are NOT going on strike!

98.3% of GPs have voted in favour of taking one or more of the GPC England’s promoted lists of Collective Action.   GP practices will remain open, and no proposed action will create a breach of their contracts.

Why GPs are engaging in this collective action

General Practice funding is less than £108 per patient per year, this equates to at most 2-3 contacts per year per patient, compared to the cost of an outpatient appointment estimated to start at £130-£400 as per the King’s fund estimates, there is something about demand and reasonable expectation.  The £108 per patient, is to run practice premises and employ staff, this is not enough for GPs to employ enough staff to give patients the care they deserve.  The financial situation is unsustainable, with many Practices having to shut, because they cannot afford to keep going. GP’s and their teams want their patients to experience safe, high quality and sustainable care, this is difficult without appropriate funding.  Less than 10% of the total NHS funding is allocated to primary care and this is a decreasing percentage, with increasing workload i.e. more than 90% of NHS work is done in primary care and this is an increasing percentage.

 What have GPs agreed to do as collective action

• GPs are not going to carry out work that they are not contracted to do.
• Referrals – they will not complete unnecessary forms and templates but will still provide the information that is required.
• Monitoring – they will not provide monitoring of some services, which they will give notice on.
• Number of contacts – they will limit, to a recommended safe number, of contacts per day, others will be diverted to local urgent care settings, once the maximum capacity has been reached

How will this affect your care

No patients care will be put at risk, it may be that patients will be diverted to local urgent care settings once the GP’s have reached their maximum capacity, we hope that patients will not notice much of a change with the service their GPs are still providing.

What we ask of our patients

We ask that you support your GP’s before it is to late, we don’t want to lose GP’s or their Practices.

It is surely very revealing that NHS England have expressed concerns about the impact of General Practitioners, simply choosing to do only what they are contracted and appropriately resourced to do; this demonstrates how their goodwill and commitment to doing the best for their patients has been systematically exploited and relied on.