Rubbishing David Cameron’s plan for a seven-day health service, Britain’s top GP says primary care funding has fallen to dangerous levels. The NHS faces an “explosion” of one million extra patients living with multiple life-threatening conditions, warns Britain’s top GP.
Maureen Baker, chair of the Royal College of GPs, says the health service is already “struggling” with an estimated six million over-60s who have several complaints such as cancer, diabetes and heart disease. She predicts there will be another million by 2025 and accused the Government of allowing funding of primary care to fall to “dangerous” levels.
The RCGP says 90% of all patient contact with the NHS is in general practice but it gets just 8.33% of the budget.
Dr Baker wants chancellor George Osborne to ensure primary care gets 11% of the overall NHS budget, 10,000 more GPs and “an immediate injection of £750 million of additional core funding in the next financial year”.
Full story in The Mirror 1 October 2015