12/07/2026
An interesting article taken from the Daily Telegraph about the pressures GPs are under:
"We do 90% of NHS consults for 8% of the entire budget.
Increasing workloads, dump of hospital work onto GPs, decreasing funding and increased work imposition by successive governments with the latest contract imposition of unlimited digital consultations tipping many surgeries over the edge.
"That prioritisation of digital consults pushing out the elderly and sickest in priority for digital savvy young and worried well.
Google and AI searches and health anxiety increasing workload.
Collapsing mental health services leaving most mental health to be managed by GPs. All my mental health referrals are refused. I cannot remember the last referral that was accepted.
"Increasing expectations and complexity of patients, long waiting lists and patients returning to their GPs to support them while awaiting hospital care, unsafe rushed hospital discharges because of hospitals desperate to free up beds.
"Post operative patients always used to have hospital follow up appointments after surgery. Now that is left the the GP who is not a surgical doctor and won't know the answers to the post op patients' concerns.
"Outpatient follow up appointments have been changed to patient initiated follow up with patients often unclear that they should contact the hospital outpatient team if they have ongoing clinical concerns, and come back to the GP, with us trying to work out what's going on. Often they have run out of time on that patient initiated follow up and we have to refer back to the hospital, most of our time involved.
"Patients that need to go to A&E refusing to go because they have had such an awful recent hospital experience and we are left wondering what we can do to keep them safe.
"Care packages or respite care home placements that would have been available two years ago have absolutely vanished so hospitals are completely bed blocked mid summer. This leads to unsafe early discharges and GPs dealing with an unwell, usually elderly person, unsafe at home and unwell, with us struggling to get them re admitted.
"Streeting's cuts to hospital funding have removed services like these for emergency care packages to prevent hospital admission as the money simply disappeared. That is why we have utter bed block and collapsing hospital care mid summer. I've never seen it before. This is Streeting's legacy to the NHS.
"I work 45-70 hours per week, 20 in the day job- the GP surgery.
The pay is under half what I would get to work as a GP for the 111 out of hours services or as a GP in A&E. and the work is far more stressful, complex and overwhelming.
"Why would anyone be a GP.
"This is because of successive funding cuts by governments over the last decades leading to falling GP pay and increasing unpaid hours as we can't get the job done.
"Increased workload, increased complexity, more unsafe working because of unsafe hospital discharges, hospital workload dump and the complete lack of access to social care packages and bed currently.
"Senior GPs are leaving in their droves; more junior GPs and the ARRS additional roles staff who are not trained as GPs are left to fill the gaps, sometimes not safely. And the job becomes increasingly impossible to do safely and burnout ensues.
"Streeting imposed successive unsafe contract changes on GPs and refused to meet with them and has not engaged with GP leaders since the first unsafe contract change imposition last year.
"Burnham needs to get a decent health minister in asap, get them sat down with GP leaders asap and get things sorted.
"GPs provide 90% of NHS consultations for 8% of the NHS budget. "We collapse, the NHS collapses.
"Then he needs to reinstate hospital funding for the emergency social care packages, clinical staff cuts, etc that Streeting removed. Take it out of the billions being poured into private hospitals to do the least urgent surgical operations so Streeting could boast waiting target improvements. You cannot prioritise the least urgent hospital care while A&Es collapse, 1200 patients per month die due to A&E delays, corridor care is entrenched and cancer care is collapsing.
Article:
"'Greg says the pressure isn’t just the number of patients, it’s how much work hospitals now expect GPs to pick up. One of his first patients on Tuesday is an 88-year-old woman who has recently been discharged from hospital after a fall that left her with multiple fractures. Her discharge summary also contains worrying blood test results that still need investigating.
“Years ago, they would’ve sorted it in hospital,” says Greg.
“Now it’s, ‘GP, deal with this.’ You’re picking up the pieces, making sure they’re safe at home and chasing all the tests.”
'“We have loads and loads of mental health problems, especially in younger people,” he says. “There are no real support services. Mental health services are so poor that they just come to us.”
'The Royal College of Psychiatrists estimates that around 25pc of GP appointments involve mental health conditions.'
'“My day will often be an eight-to-eight day. I’ll clear the urgent admin, but I’ll still have letters to write and things to finish.”
Even on days off, Brunet often logs back in from home to spend another four hours clearing the backlog.'
"'But they do not explain another puzzle at the heart of general practice: while patients struggle to see a doctor, some qualified GPs are struggling to find work. Becks Fisher, of the Nuffield Trust, says part of the explanation lies in the rapid expansion of non-GP roles through the Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme (ARRS), introduced in 2019 to bring more staff into general practice.' 'While staff such as physios or pharmacists can take on some simpler appointments, GPs are increasingly left managing the most complex cases.' Stuart Hoddinott, from the Institute for Government, says: “It does take appointments off GPs’ plates, but those are often the lower complexity appointments, and it leaves GPs with the more complex ones.”
"Paramedics, pharmacists, nurse practitioners and physios. They can support services but their training is limited, they are not trained to deal with complexity. Deployed correctly more complex patients are left to fill GP lists and the workload becomes more complex and there is no reprieve. Deployed incorrectly patient safety is compromised.
"'Steve Mowles, a GP partner who manages a busy practice in Lambeth, south London, already has 38 patients to see when we talk on Monday. He adds that a decision by the former health secretary Wes Streeting to lift a cap on the number of electronic consultations has placed additional strain on practices.
“You could potentially have 100 extra electronic consultations coming in on any given day, and you just have to deal with it. At what point does the workload become unsafe?”
"Greg says online systems have also created a generational divide. Older patients can struggle with digital forms, while younger ones, used to instant online access, fill in several at a time, expecting healthcare to work the same way.
"The internet has also changed demand. A quick Google search can turn a headache into a deadly disease within minutes, while patients increasingly arrive armed with information and their own diagnosis.'"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2026/07/12/gps-go-part-time-as-doctors-lose-faith-in-the-nhs/?fbclid=IwY2xjawTAcjtleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEeIxGdtD8VG35II5u7C9KmPJUfEY8l3IqYRCggDskpunD-yZQZAeiRa9Cgadk_aem_n04SLUU4pVDyJq0OExmWqA
Endless paperwork, complex cases and brutal hours are stretching the profession in every direction
