Seeing a GPs should not be like “booking an Uber driver”, warns Health and Care Select Committee

The latest Health and Social Care Committee report on the future of general practice, published today, urges ministers and NHS England to acknowledge a crisis in general practice and sets out what steps they are taking to protect patient safety. 

MPs warn that seeing your GP should not be like phoning a call centre or “booking an Uber driver”, and note that care based on a doctor-patient relationship is essential for patient safety and patient experience.  

Health and Social Care Committee member, Rachael Maskell, commented: “Our inquiry has heard time and again the benefits of continuity of care to a patient with evidence linking it to reduced mortality and emergency admissions. Yet that important relationship between a GP and their patients is in decline. We find it unacceptable that this, one of the defining standards of general practice, has been allowed to erode and our report today sets out a series of measures to reverse that decline.”  

However, the report highlights that progress will be difficult unless workforce shortages are addressed. During the inquiry, MPs also heard that continuity of care is more difficult to achieve in very deprived areas, often due to existing GP shortages and patient populations with complex health needs. 

The report sets out steps to reverse the decline in the continuity of care, making it an explicit national priority with a new measure requiring GP practices to report on continuity of care by 2024. MPs also urged NHS England to champion the ‘personal list’ model and re-implement it in the GP contract from 2030.  

Responding to the Health and Social Care Committee report on the future of general practice, Ruth Rankine, Director of the Primary Care Network at the NHS Confederation, said: “Staff working across primary care have worked harder than ever to recover services and ensure access to services since the height of the pandemic. However, as they continue to grapple with enormous and rising patient demand the government has so far paid lip service to ensuring adequate funding is in place to support services and retain a valuable workforce.  

“Our members will welcome many of the recommendations and ambitions set out in this report, but we know that tangible solutions to addressing critical capacity gaps in primary care will not be fixed overnight.  

“Within the current workforce constraints, the importance of working at-scale through primary care networks and federations is critical, both to keep general practice sustainable and provide additional capacity to ensure access for those who need it and delivery of important public health programmes. 

“Primary care staff will continue to champion continuity of care to those patients who need it most, but to make it real will require a funded and deliverable workforce plan otherwise this will continue to be an aspiration rather than the norm.”