The alarm has been raised over a “growing shortage” of family doctors by health experts. They point to new estimates which suggest a quarter of posts could be vacant in the next 10 years - with a worse-case scenario putting that figure at as much as 50%.
Urgent action has been called for by the Health Foundation think tank as it published a forecast showing there could be thousands of vacancies across England. It found the current shortage of 4,200 full-time equivalent GPs in England is set to rise to 10,700 in 2030/31, reports PA.
The think tank said this could mean more than one in four of the 37,800 general practitioner posts needed to deliver pre-pandemic standards of care would be vacant. Under the worse-case scenario, the projected shortfall could rise to more than 20,000 - around half of all posts.
