GP Funding: South-west England Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department of Health and Social Care
Jim Shannon
Main Page: Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party - Strangford)Department Debates - View all Jim Shannon's debates with the Department of Health and Social Care
(1 day, 21 hours ago)
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Martin Wrigley
Practice managers tell me that that has already happened and they are less funded now than they were last year.
On the changing numbers, each GP was supporting 1,800 patients in 2019 and is supporting 2,400 today, but safe care is often estimated to be closer to 1,400 per GP. So we are overloading GPs with patients. Practices make heroic use of pharmacists, physios and nurse practitioners, but the arithmetic does not add up. Meanwhile, the other part of their funding, the quality and outcomes framework scheme, has faced changes that have negatively impacted primary care. This meant that, nationally, £298 million was redistributed from the QOF into the global sum—we can see how bizarre this funding set-up gets; the names are just weird—and into cardiovascular disease prevention funding. Another £100 million of funding was repurposed but does not put extra capacity into the system. Rather than providing new money to support GPs, this felt to practice managers that the Government had been rearranging the deckchairs.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate. He is right to address this issue—I spoke to him just before his introduction. We have great difficulty across all this United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland when it comes to securing GPs for practices. In recent years, I have been trying to ensure, with the health service, that action can be taken regarding the student loans of young medical students, if they give a commitment to remain in a GP practice for a set period of, say, five years. That would enable more GPs to stay in the system. Does he feel that that is something the Minister and the Government should take on board?
Martin Wrigley
All those things help, along with things like bringing back nurses’ bursaries. On rearranging the deckchairs, it is no wonder that practice managers described this year’s settlement as unfunded, unsustainable and unsafe.