A STATEMENT FROM THE PARTNERS OF MONTGOMERY-HOUSE SURGERY
You may have read recently about Collective Action being taken by GP practices across the UK following a ballot by the British Medical Association (BMA) which asked GP Partners to vote to take actions to save general practice.
Against the background of rising costs, funding for general practice has been steadily reducing in real terms whilst our workload has been increasing year on year as GP surgeries are expected to take on more and more work. With hospital waiting lists at an all time high, patients who would previously have been treated in hospital or seen by specialists are being forced to return to their GP for more complex care as their symptoms worsen and secondary care is unable to care for them; our growing elderly population needs more care and support; and GPs are required to complete more and more reports and paperwork, review more results, issue more prescriptions and Fit Notes, as well as keeping up to date with training and best practice to ensure that we deliver the service you deserve.
We monitor the number of calls and eConsults we receive as well as the number of appointments we provide and over the last month (August 2024) we answered 4,808 calls and received 4,355 eConsults and spoke to hundreds of patients at our reception desk each week – handling around 450 incoming patient contacts each working day. This is a 15% increase in the number of monthly calls and eConsults since April 2023.
Against this backdrop of increased demand, the numbers of GPs in England is reducing which means that each GP is now looking after higher numbers of patients. Here at Montgomery-House Surgery, each full-time GP looks after 2,192 patients.
As a result we rely on the expertise of our extended team to care for you – from pharmacists and physios, and our team of specialist nurses and healthcare assistants, to our paramedics, minor illness nurses and mental health workers. All of the clinicians you see are qualified specialists and all of them are able to access your medical history and notes, make appropriate clinical decisions, and have clear pathways to your usual GP where needed.
GP Surgeries receive just £107.57 per year – or 30p per day – for each registered patient, that’s less than the cost of your TV licence. We believe that Primary Care deserves a bigger slice of NHS funding to allow us to train and hire more GPs, deliver more services, make improvements to the building and facilities, and pay our hard-working and dedicated staff properly for their work.
We welcome the recent promise to increase funding to £112.50 per patient but whilst the National Minimum Wage has increased by just over 20% over the last two years and with all the costs associated with running a practice rising each year, that increase is not enough to allow us to deliver the service you need.
The collective actions put forward by the BMA are designed to be safe and sustainable whilst turning up the pressure on the government to properly fund general practice.
From 19 August 2024, in line with BMA guidelines on safe working, we have been limiting GP appointments to 25 per GP, per day.
At the same time, and after listening to feedback on how you like to work with us, we have increased the availability of on the day face to face appointments with your GP, so that over 50% of appointments are now offered as face to face, whilst maintaining the option for those who prefer them to have telephone consultations.
As part of this Collective Action we are making some changes in the background to the way we interact with the hospital referral process and share information which does not affect patient care, but we are not stopping unfunded or poorly funded work such as joint injections, hospital blood tests or coil fitting.
We hope you will agree that things need to change and support us in our action. We know our patients value our staff and the many kind comments and compliments we receive make the work we do all the more rewarding but it is clear that general practice is in decline and that change is needed.
