The British Medical Association (BMA) has shared a “vision to rebuild general practice”, setting out “essential changes that need to happen” in order to achieve sustainability, including moving forward a public health data-driven model and investing in technologies.
The BMA places focus on stability, urging the government and NHS England to commit to a minimum general practice investment standard and restore core funding. As part of this, the vision emphasises the need to work with the profession to understand “where simple tech could revolutionise pathways and speed acute flow”, giving the example of investing in electronic prescription services in trusts.
Additionally, the BMA states that the GP patient record is “integral to patients’ trust in their GP”, and adds that practice data controller liabilities should be covered by the adding of clinical information governance to the CNSGP. “We should use the richest source of health data in the Western world to raise NHS funds,” the BMA continues, “but maintain integrity, professional standards and public confidence to do so via following the Goldacre Review recommendations.” The vision also emphasises the need to tell patients how data is used in keeping with the national data guardian of “no surprises”.
The BMA highlights the opportunity to move away from a reactive hospital-focused crisis care model and towards “proactive, preventative, public health-data driven primary medical care in the community”. According to the vision, this should involve targeted efforts to intervene through a preventative agenda, learning from “exemplar nations” and aiming for a “gold standard” of one full-time GP per 1,000 patients.
Further efforts are encouraged around building neighbourhood and community health transformation, and ensuring manageable workloads and better patient safety by working to improve GP to patient list sizes. In particular, the BMA points to data from a survey undertaken earlier this year, which indicates that 89 percent of responding GPs delivered 26 consultations or more in a day, with 52 percent delivering between 31 and 50; this contrasts safe working guidance that GPs should deliver no more than 25 consultations per day in order to safely manage all responsibilities.
Read the vision in full here.
Spotlight on primary care
In July news around primary care and digital has included an update on enhancements to the GP Connect Update Record, and findings from the GP Patient Survey 2024.
Last month, HTN explored NHSE statistics on the number of video/online consultations undertaken in spring this year in comparison to spring last year; click here to see the trend.
In May we reported on new guidance from NHSE for primary care which focuses on helping general practice teams to use data in understanding and managing variations in demand and capacity.
May also saw the publication of correspondence from Dr Amanda Doyle, national director of primary care and community services at NHS England, and Ed Garratt, chief executive of NHS Suffolk and North Essex ICB, proposing plans to test new ways of working to ‘optimise the general practice operating model’ across urgent and proactive care services.
Elsewhere in primary care, we took a look at the primary care strategy for 2024-2027 from Digital Health and Care Wales, with priorities including developing a digital futures team with the intention of shaping technology choices, and enhancing researching and reporting capability.
