GP surgeries in London are at “saturation point” and cannot provide any more care to patients, family doctors’ leaders in the capital have warned in a dossier of evidence sent to MPs. Representatives of 7,000 GPs at 1,300 practices claim they cannot cope with existing demand and that the situation will get worse as London’s population soars to 9.2 million by 2020. Cuts to health visiting, community nursing, mental health and other services have turned surgeries into places where patients with nowhere else to go turn up but experience “a revolving door of consultations”, they say.
This stark depiction of overloaded practices is contained in a submission to the House of Commons health select committee’s new inquiry into the growing pressures on family doctors and primary care. It has been made by Londonwide Local Medical Committees, an umbrella group for the statutory bodies that represent GPs in 27 of the 32 boroughs.
Despite GPs’ efforts to meet rising demand for appointments, “the reality is that the saturation point has been hit even by the most competently working practices in London. General practice in London is beset by blockages in flow, diverting staff from consulting, co-ordinating or planning care, and both reducing access to patients and demotivating professionals,” the submission said. Family doctors are “stressed and depressed” trying to maintain the quality of care they provide in the face of “unprecedented rises in patient demand”, caused by an ageing and growing, and increasingly unwell population.
Full story in The Guardian 12 September 2015