Two million more GP appointments for patients than before the pandemic
Two million more GP appointments a month are being delivered for patients compared to the same month before the pandemic, as part of the NHS primary care access recovery plan.
New NHS data published today shows more than 25.7 million appointments (excluding COVID vaccinations) were delivered by GP practices in December 2023, an increase of 9% compared to pre-pandemic.
‘GP teams carried out 2 million more appointments for patients in December compared with the same month in 2019 before the pandemic. The NHS published a plan last year to improve access to GP services, which includes upgrading telephone systems to make it easier for people to contact their general practice, while more than 36,000 additional staff have joined GP teams since 2019 to deliver even more appointments,’ said Dr Amanda Doyle, NHS England National Director for Primary Care and Community Services.
‘This is incredible progress from hardworking teams across the country and we are determined to make it easier to access services around people's busy lives, so if you are concerned about your health please come forward for care.’
More than 8 in 10 GP practices have now upgraded their telephone systems with the remaining practices signed up to make the move by March.
The blueprint also gives people more choice in how they access care, with more than 10,000 pharmacies now treating people for 7 common conditions including sinusitis, sore throat, earache, infected insect bite, impetigo, shingles, and uncomplicated urinary tract infections in women over the age of 65.
The action is expected to free up to 10 million GP appointments a year and, with 80% of people in England living within a 20-minute walk of a pharmacy, the move will give the public more choice in where and how they access care.
In December, more than two fifths (45.7%) of appointments were booked and attended on the same day, up 3.1% on the previous month and over 7 in 10 appointments were attended within 7 days of booking.
‘We want to deliver faster, simpler, fairer access to primary care for patients, and this data shows that we've met our target of 50 million additional general practice appointments several months ahead of schedule. I am extremely grateful to all GPs who continue to go above and beyond to deliver the best possible care to patients,’ said Primary Care Minister Andrea Leadsom.
‘We have introduced the first ever Long Term Workforce Plan for the NHS, which will help us transform GP services nationwide, providing 6,000 more GP training places a year by 2031, and there are nearly 2,800 more doctors and 36,000 extra staff in general practice now compared to December 2019.’
The increase in appointments follows an NHS targeted support programme for GP practices to improve access for patients with one GP practice in Warwickshire reducing the number of abandoned calls to its practice by 90%.
Abbey Medical Centre in Kenilworth, Warwickshire, used data provided by their new upgraded telephone system to identify when telephone lines were busiest and to ensure more reception staff were available at peak times.
The practice also targeted their most frequent callers by offering vulnerable patients more support from the same clinicians, with their appointment usage reducing by three-quarters.
The 25 patients who had the most appointments accounted for 8% of the total number of appointments available (50 out of 625 in a week) with the practice serving 16,000 patients.
‘The General Practice Improvement Programme has really helped us continue to improve our services so that more patients can get the care they need more easily. It's particularly helped the patients who we previously saw most frequently, many as often as twice a week, by enabling us to focus on how we provide the best care for them, so they get the care they need with fewer appointments, which is better for them and means there are more appointments available for others who also need them,’ said Ryan Smith, Non-Clinical Partner at the Abbey Medical Centre.
Nurses call for emergency measures amid sharp decline in student applications
The RCN has called the Government to fund emergency measures to address the ‘rapidly deteriorating state of nurse recruitment’.
The General Secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, Pat Cullen, has called for ‘immediate and corrective action’ to support nurse recruitment. This call to action comes after latest figures from the university and colleges admissions service (UCAS) show a sharp drop in applicants to nursing courses for the next academic year.
UCAS figures show that there were just 24,680 nursing applicants to education providers in England this year, compared to 27,370 applicants in 2023 and 33,410 in 2022. This represents a 10% fall in the last year and a 26% fall in the last 2 years. This is despite the Government's Long Term Workforce Plan to employ 300,000 extra nurses, doctors and other health workers.
Cullen noted that this leaves the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan in danger of falling off course and poses ‘a direct threat to the sustainability of the NHS and patient safety.’ ‘The UK government must recognise the severity of this emergency and take immediate action to prevent further decline in nursing recruitment,’ said Cullen in a letter to the Health Secretary, Victoria Atkins.
At next month's budget, the RCN has urged the Government to introduce emergency measures to address the ‘rapidly deteriorating state of nurse recruitment’. This includes removing student tuition fees to eliminate the financial burden and attract a wider pool of potential candidates; implementing a loan forgiveness scheme for NHS nurses to incentivise them to remain in the public health care system; and reintroducing universal living maintenance grants so students can focus on their studies without experiencing financial or emotional hardship.
Other leaders in the field have expressed similar concern and supported the call to action. With over 121,000 workforce vacancies, of which 42,000 are in nursing, Saffron Cordery, deputy chief executive at NHS Providers, said trust leaders are likely to be ‘extremely worried’. ‘We look forward to the government providing detail on how it will fund and implement the plan so that the NHS can plan effectively, ensuring it has the right resources in place to meet evolving healthcare needs,’ she said.
Similarly, Vanessa Wilson, chief executive of University Alliance, an association of 16 of the UK's professional and technical universities, noted that the continued decline in applications for subjects like teaching, nursing and midwifery spelt trouble for the future of the public sector. ‘A concerted effort to reverse these trends will be required from the Government, the NHS and universities if we are to meet the ambitions set out in the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan,’ said Wilson.
‘Radical and wholesale’ reform towards primary and community services needed
The NHS needs to be ‘radically refocused’ from hospital care to primary and community care services, according to a new report by a leading think tank. ‘Making care closer to home a reality,’ by the King's Fund states if this shift in focus does not happen, more expensive hospitals will need to be built to manage people with acute needs that could have been prevented or better managed.
‘The answer to over-crowded hospitals is not more hospitals. Despite this being well understood for many years, there is now a higher proportion of the NHS budget and staff going into hospital services. At the same time, there has been a slow erosion of capacity and confidence in primary and community care,’ said Sarah Woolnough, chief executive of The King's Fund.
The report found that despite the majority of interactions with the NHS through primary and community services, the proportion of Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) spending on primary care has actually fallen. In 2021/22 the largest proportion of DHSC spending, £83.1 billion, went to acute hospitals, compared to £14.9 billion spent on primary care.
On average there are more than 876,164 GP appointments in the NHS every day, an increase of 34,219 appointments a day since 2018/19. However, while acute hospital trusts have seen 27% funding growth since 2016/17, community trusts have had just over half that level of growth, at 14%.