GP closures across the UK have reached an all-time high and have affected an estimated half a million patients last year. An investigation by medical website Pulse found 138 doctors’ surgeries shut their doors in 2018 compared with 18 in 2013.
GPs have said the under-resourcing and recruitment difficulties were the reason for surgeries being forced to close. Smaller practices have been seen merging with others to try and survive.
Pulse revealed that 12 GP surgeries have closed in January. The worst affected are smaller surgeries who have less than 5,000 patients – they accounted for 86% of the closures.
The pace of the closures has not improved despite the attempts to address the problem; the NHS set up funding for vulnerable practices which later became the ‘resilience fund’.
Prof Helen Stokes-Lampard, chair of the Royal College of GPs, said the figures were sad but unsurprising.
She said: “GPs and our teams are working to our absolute limits to provide safe, high-quality care, while general practice is under intense pressure, and this is resulting in some GPs leaving the profession, and in other cases forcing them to close their surgery doors,”
“In some areas, practice closures are the result of surgeries merging or joining federations in order to pool their resources and provide additional services in the best interests of their patient population.”
Dr Jackie Applebee, a GP and the chair of the Tower Hamlets local medical committee, said: “The system is creaking. The smaller practices – which patients prefer and which have good outcomes – are being lost because of the under-resourcing.”
BMA GP Committee chair Dr Richard Vautrey said: ‘As with all those that have had a challenging time in recent years, we hope smaller practices will receive greater mutual support from others with the development of the new networks.
‘These networks, built on top of existing contracts, mean practices can support one another with workforce and resources, which may reduce the need for formal mergers, and address some of the pressures behind closures.’
Figures released by the NHS Digital showed that the number of full-time GPs fell by 441 in the 12 months up to March 2019.
Responding to the Pulse research, an NHS England spokesman said: “We continue to support all general practices to help them thrive.
“Thousands of practices continue to be helped through the GP resilience programme, where investment has been increased from a planned £8m in 2019-20 to £13m.”
