General Practice has been broken. Help us fix it.

Dear patient.

You may be wondering why your GP practice and GPs across Lincolnshire and the country have felt there was no option but to start collective action and why something is different at your GP practice.

Successive governments have claimed that there has been more investment, more GPs and that if you can’t get an appointment, or feel the service is not good enough, that it is your GP practices’ fault.

It simply is not true.

General Practice has been broken. Help us fix it.

GPs Are On Your Side

While your practice is doing incredible work and the team is dedicated to doing the very best for you, the workload, pressure and lack of investment in general practice means that they can’t deliver everything they want for you, patients are suffering, and your GP is not willing to allow that to continue.

Your practice is taking action to support and protect the health of you and your family now and for the future.

Actions your practice and all others across the country are taking are aimed to avoid impact on you, the people we value so highly.

Let us be clear: GPs are not striking.

Your practice will still be open, delivering GP services, while actions being taken aim to stop the work that should not be expected of your GP practice in the first place. Do still contact your GP practice as you normally would.

Your practice doesn’t want to inconvenience or frustrate you, but you and they both need the government to realise they must prioritise and value your health by finally valuing and investing in general practice to provide a service that you need and deserve. 

General Practice is collapsing. Every practice across England is struggling to keep its doors open.

We value our patients. We know that most patients value us too, especially when they need us regularly. You know we can deal with most of your health problems, keep you out of hospital, and have your best interests at heart. The problem is with the mismanagement of the NHS.

Your GP is an expert in general medical practice – trained over 10 years to deal with complex problems, spot serious symptoms, and decide when you need specialist help at the hospital.

But did you know that your practice receives just £107.57 per year for each patient, whatever their health needs. That’s less than the cost of an annual TV licence.

It’s just 30p a day for every patient registered with us – less than the cost of an apple.

We believe general practice deserves a bigger slice of NHS funding so we can train and hire more GPs, deliver the services you require and make it easier for you and your loved ones to get appointments to see your GP and practice team.

GPs want the same things that you do. We believe nobody should struggle to see their family doctor.

General Practice should be as it once was – a familiar family doctor, offering continuity of care in a surgery full of friendly familiar faces within a safe building where you knew you would get the care you needed.

The pressures on your GP practice have increased year on year.

• 1700 fewer full time, qualified GPs since September 2015 when 6,000 - additional GPs were promised by the previous government by 2019.
  • We all want more not less GPs. Large numbers of GPs are leaving GP due to workload or moving abroad due to the pressure on NHS general practice.
• 1.4 million - average daily appointments delivered in general practice across England – 20% increase since pre-covid.
  • Your practice team is delivering more appointments than ever but risk burning out. In May, here in Lincolnshire, over 527,000 appointments were carried out.
    • That’s roughly an appointment every week for 15% of the Lincolnshire population.
    • That’s roughly 1500 appointments a week on average per practice!
• Only 6% of the overall NHS budget spent on general practice in England despite doing 90% of all NHS activity.
  • You and general practice deserve more than this to deliver the service you want. Financial modelling suggests dedicating around 15% of the NHS budget would provide that service.
• Your practice receives just £107.57 a year for each patient. This is a 20% real term reduction in funding in the last 7 years.
  • Practices have done more with less for as long as they can. How is the government valuing you with such low funding?
• The difference in costs to run practices over the last 6 years is about 20% higher than funding has risen.
  • When finances don’t add up and bills can’t be paid – practices close.
• Increasing population, age and medical conditions needing more appointments.
  • More patients who need more care, the care your practice wants to give, but there is a limit to what your practice can safely provide.
• NHS push to move more services into the community but no staff or infrastructure or funding to support.
  • We all want care closer to home, but it needs to work to make it a success for you.
• Escalating pressure on general practice due to hospital waiting lists.
  • A growing number of patients appropriately use extra appointments at your practice while awaiting hospital appointments but, if the hospital waiting list were not so long, they would have already been seen by their consultant.
• Workload shift into general practice from hospitals.
  • Hospitals transfer large amounts of work into general practice which should have been carried out in hospital. This takes your GP practice team away from providing care to you when you need it.
• Increased box ticking taking away from your GP practice team being able to care for you.
  • Your GP and their team want to be providing direct care for you, not ticking boxes that don’t improve your care or experience.
• Funding levels into general practice is such a problem that there are GPs without jobs despite practices needing more GPs!
  • Your GP practice wants to employ more GPs to help you, but there simply isn’t money to do so. How can governments create a system that means there are GPs who can’t get jobs when we all want more GPs?
• In the last 10 years in Lincolnshire around 20% of practices have closed, and the pattern of closure is similar across the county.
  • Your practice works tirelessly to support and care for you and your family. Closure of a practice is devastating for the practice team and just then adds more pressure to other local practices who then take on the closed practice’s patients.
• This action is not about GPs demanding a pay rise.
  • This is fundamentally about the critical need to increase funding into your GP practice to keep the lights on, doors open and to pay the staff so your GP practice can survive to provide the services you need to support your health.

General Practice has been broken. Help us fix it.

GPs Are On Your Side.

See the resources you can use to help your GP practice

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Support your practice as they take action to protect and support the health of you and your family.

Dr Reid Baker - Medical Director Lincolnshire LMC - representing Lincolnshire general practice.