The General Practitioners Committee (GPC) has announced in its manifesto that the number of patients a GP meets daily should be capped. If the doctor reaches the cap then there will be a collection of ‘locality hubs’ who will be able to pick up the excess demand.
This manifesto forms part of the wider document Responsive, safe and sustainable: our urgent prescription for general practice which seeks to apply pressure on the Government ahead of its plan for GPs which is set to be released next week.
The introduction of ‘locality hubs’ to ease the pressure on overworked GPs could be an important tool to achieve this idea in the future. Quite how this might work in practice has yet to be particularised.
The call to place an arbitrary national cap on the number of patients that a GP can reasonably be expected to see on any given day is a radical approach which does not seem at first glance to be completely workable in practice. Closer scrutiny of the plans will need to be undertaken to assess the merits of the proposal.
The central goal to reduce the pressure placed on GPs is one which all those involved in the care sector wish to resolve. The GPC is an extremely powerful representative of the GP profession and its thoughts and opinions should be considered thoroughly by the Government. The overall ambition for both the Government and GPs is to provide the best service possible to the patients these clinics serve. However, ideas about how this can be achieved can differ greatly. We await the Government’s report next week which will detail it’s roadmap for GPs and what actions it sees fit to support GPs.
