general practice

The NHS in England is to pay recruitment agencies £100m as part of a huge international drive to boost the number of GPs. Contracts have been put out to tender that could see half of the extra 5,000 GPs promised by 2020 brought in from abroad. It comes as the NHS continues to struggle to train...

Labour has accused the government of treating GP services with astonishing neglect, as the party released an analysis that showed millions of patients have worse access to their family doctor than five years ago. The shadow health secretary, Jonathan Ashworth, said a study of the GP patient...

Hi, I'm moving from Wales to Shrewsbury and will need to register with a new GP surgery. I have type 2. Is anyone able to recommend a particular surgery? I believe there are quite a few I could choose from. Many thanks.

“A GP, eh? Well I guess there are worse things you could do.” That was the only careers advice I got in my final year at medical school. The Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) has previously raised awareness of bad mouthing of GPs during medical school training. The college...

Government cuts have forced councils to reduce planned spending on public health services by £85m in 2017/18, a leading think tank has warned, in a move that threatens to drive up GP workload and strip vital services from practices. Analysis by the King's Fund, based on data from the Department...

Guidance to improve how hospitals and primary care work together spells out rules around referrals to secondary care, how hospitals should manage DNAs, discharge summaries and other issues. GP leaders have said that work dumped on GP practices by hospitals wastes around 15m appointments a year...

GP leaders have welcomed an update to the standard NHS contract that aims to crack down on hospitals dumping work on practices and save millions of appointments a year. Changes to the contract introduced from 1 April aim to prevent hospitals transferring responsibility for providing fit notes...

GPs report increasing waits for routine social care assessments, problems securing respite care and being forced to seek hospital admission for patients who could have been kept at home with better social care and community support. Four in five GPs also say that social care support for their...

Anyone who has visited their GP recently will be aware of the pressures: the struggle to get an appointment, the difficulty of seeing the same GP more than once, the rush to get you out of the door for the next patient. The crisis in general practice is unprecedented. The health secretary...

A record number of GP practices closed last year, forcing thousands of patients to find a new surgery, in spite of government attempts to stop local doctors shutting their doors. NHS England data showed nearly a hundred practices closed in 2016, a 114% increase in GP closures compared with...

The ongoing A&E crisis has shifted attention on to GPs. We are being blamed for being less accessible (with appointments hard to get or surgeries not being open for long enough), while A&E is open 24/7 and therefore faces unchecked demand. But this makes little sense. You only need to take a...

The length of GP consultations in the NHS is "crazy" and risks undermining care if more patients are pushed out of hospitals, doctor leaders are warning. Average consultation length is 10 minutes in the UK - thought to be the shortest in the developed world. GP leaders said this was already...

GPs seeking help with depression, addiction, stress and other mental health issues can now access support from the GP Health Service, following its launch on Monday 30 January. The world's first dedicated health service for GPs is now live, offering free, confidential help for GPs and GP...

Patient demand for a seven-day GP service has been overestimated and it is 'simply not true' to claim that stretching access over weekends is the key to improving NHS care, Nottingham academics have warned. A report by Nottingham University Business School's centre for health innovation...

Patients could face paying their family doctors for out-of-hours appointments and minor procedures that fall outside the surgery’s contracted NHS work, under new plans being proposed by some GP leaders. The scheme would see doctors use their own time to treat and charge patients and involve the...

Family doctors and medical leaders have rejected Theresa May’s demand to move to a seven-day week, with senior GPs warning that it could lead to mass resignations. Dr Kailash Chand, a former deputy chair of the British Medical Association, said GPs were so angry with government attempts to...

Britain's leading GP says she is "profoundly concerned" about how doctors will cope with demand over the busy winter period. Helen Stokes-Lampard, chair of the Royal College of GPs Council, said general practice was "skating on thin ice", warning: "Something has to give". Some people wait...

GPs could avoid as many as three quarters of official complaints from patients by offering an apology, a survey of the public has suggested. Three in four (76%) people said they would be unlikely to make a complaint if their GP apologised after an adverse incident, according to a YouGov poll of...

NHS bosses are planning for a 50% reduction in GP numbers across East London in the next five years, according to an STP leader. North-east London STP clinical director and GP Sir Sam Everington revealed the shocking prediction to the House of Lords committee on NHS sustainability. ‘We have...

EXCLUSIVE GP practices are refusing to sign up to new premises leases which would see their fees hiked by up to '400%', Pulse has learned. Several GP practices are now challenging new leases proposed to them by NHS Property Services, which supposedly reflect the rates the premises would fetch...