GP Survival welcomes the detailed review that RCGP has taken of the much-hyped GP Forward View (GPFV) launched in April 2016.
This report confirms what many frontline GPs and the annual LMC conference in 2016 predicted, that the GPFV is not the solution to our current GP State of Emergency .
GPFV promised to give much needed funding and support to practices. However almost a year on after it was launched , patients on the ground can see the stresses affecting their local GP surgeries, with increasing number of surgery closures nationally and increased waiting times for routine GP appointments. The GPFV promise rise in core medical funding, and the resilience programme, appears not to be reaching the frontline staff that so desperately needs it.
We welcome the RCGP criticism of the CQC raising their fees. However the GPFV has not only failed to reduce the number and intensity of inspections but it has also failed to acknowledge that these fees are unreasonable and unjustified.
But the area in which the RCGP has been most scathing is in the proposals for Sustainability and Transformation Plans (STPs). These STPs are being developed in relative secrecy in the 44 areas, to decide on major changes to healthcare, but often without patient and frontline GPs involvement or democratic accountability.
Despite GPFV being a central Government initiative, many of these STP plans created by local bureaucrats, ignore it completely. They also appear to be focused on the needs of hospitals, while ignoring that GP services are responsible for up to 90% of care with less than 9% of the funding. Even more bizarrely some are aiming to cut GP numbers by approx. 20% while aiming to reduce hospital attendances.
The NHS, and especially GPs, has endured several reorganisations over the last decade, with well-documented problems. The principles of the GPFV were always of coordinated change, and this document has shown that the bodies tasked with carrying it out, are not delivering on their promises, or even working at odds to this plan in the case of locality STPs.
GP Survival wishes to see a GP service which is there for patients, support GPs and practice staff to remain in the job and is encouraging more of our trainee doctors to enter General Practice. We have seen nothing from the GPFV which proves to us that the Government is committed to protecting your local GP surgery
GPS Committee: Matt Mayer, Thomas Jones, Hussain Gandhi, Raquel Delgado, Preeti Shukla, Andy McIntosh, Allison Thomas, Sophie Quinney, James McGlew, Rebecca Ellen Jones, Ed Pooley, Jeremy Newman, Heather Ryan.
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