Why would they do that? The sheer perversity is incomprehensible. Just when ministers and the opposition call for more community treatment to prevent NHS beds filling up, funding is shifted away from GPs into acute hospitals. As ever, the magnetic pull of high-powered hospitals conspires with the political imperative to cut waiting lists. After headline-grabbing years of missing key hospital targets for treatment, A&E and cancer waiting times, the worst response is to suck funding out of the most productive sector providing up to 90% of care.
The share of NHS spending on GPs is falling to its lowest in eight years, at only 8.4% of the budget, according to the Health Service Journal. That’s despite the NHS long-term plan promising that “investment in primary medical and community services will grow faster than the overall NHS budget”. The opposite is happening. In 2019, the government promised 6,000 more GPs by this year: there are now fewer qualified, full-time GPs working in the NHS than there were then. Hospital productivity has fallen, with more staff providing less treatment, while GPs’ workload has increased by 20%.
