The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has raised concerns about the number of GPs available to start picking up the backlog of patients as they begin to return.
The regulator noted that over the pandemic, the number of qualified permanent full-time equivalent GPs per 100,000 patients has been at its lowest level in recent years.
This figure has been consistently falling since a peak of 28,052 in March 2016, with figures in June 2021 nearly 3% lower than they were in June 2017.
“The GP workforce will need to be able to cope with the potential backlog of patients, once people feel more confident to return to practices,” the CQC said.
“However, workforce data from NHS Digital shows some areas of concern.”
It did recognise that GPs had been behind the successful rollout of the vaccination programme and they had moved quickly to implement remote consultations as much as possible, with these now making up around half of all appointments,
There were patient groups who benefitted significantly from these, including the immunosuppressed and those with learning difficulties.
However, it was widely recognised there were also significant challenges with remote consultations, including digital poverty, poor internet access, English not being a first language, and digital literacy.
And there were issues with patients managing to get an appointment from their surgery.
“The pandemic has created a steep learning curve for some GP practices in terms of remote access,” the CQC said.
“We support the Royal College of GP’s call for an evaluation of what good looks like for digital triage systems, co-designed with patients and clinicians, to ensure that they do not exacerbate health inequalities.
“The sector needs to think about the future impact of remote or digital appointments, to make sure everyone gets the appropriate access to meet their needs safely.”
‘Patient care will suffer’
The CQC’s annual update coincided with the British Medical Association (BMA) rejecting the government’s £250m funding package and pursuing strike action.
The BMA said the plan published last week “failed to address the ongoing crisis in general practice” and that health secretary Sajid Javid “ignored the expertise and experience of family doctors when he laid out his plan and that patient care will suffer as a result”.
The body’s GP committee also unanimously passed a motion that it was “outraged by the deliberate, relentless denigration of GPs by government, NHS Improvements and certain quarters of the media.”
As a result, it is telling GPs not to comply with certain elements of the incoming changes which it says are adding to their bureaucracy and pit doctors against each other in league tables.
BMA GP committee chairman, Dr Richard Vautrey said: “GPs have been left with no alternative but to take this action. All efforts to persuade the government to introduce a workable plan that will bring immediate and longer-term improvement for doctors and their patients, have so far come to nought.
“The government has completely ignored our requests for a reduction in bureaucracy to allow us to focus more on patient care, and we are therefore encouraging doctors to withdraw from this bureaucracy themselves.
“The ultimate outcome should be to end the current crisis in general practice, to properly support practices to manage their workload pressure, including safely getting through the backlog of care caused by the pandemic and deliver a safe service to patients, allowing time to create an agreed long-term plan to make general practice sustainable for the future.”