The high turnover of GPs at some surgeries is having a detrimental impact on patient care, a new study claims. An investigation by the University of Manchester found that ‘persistent high turnover’ has affected nearly 30 per cent of English practices since 2009, causing more patients to turn to hospital accident and emergency departments and a drop in patients seeing their preferred doctor or obtaining an appointment on the day they called.
The university team defined persistent high turnover as when more than 10 per cent of GPs changed in a practice in at least three consecutive years, which it said was not uncommon. It added that this affected 2,309 of English practices at least once between 2009 and 2019.
These practices were associated with 1.8 per 100 patients more emergency hospital attendances, 5.2% fewer people seeing their preferred doctor, 10.6% fewer people reporting obtaining an appointment on the same day and 1.3% more people having lower overall satisfaction with their practice.
