Tory plans for cap on annual GP visits

26 May 2013

The Conservatives have considered limiting the number of times patients can visit their family doctor in a year, it has emerged.

Documents examining health reforms ask Tory activists if they agree or disagree with an annual cap on the number of appointments patients can book.

It is one of a number of options grassroots members were asked to look at in a consultation document, Local Health Discussion Brief, posted on the Conservative Policy Forum (CPF) website last night.

Among them were whether GPs should take greater responsibility for out of hours care in their area - something Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt addressed earlier this week - and if seeing a GP for a routine appointment in the evening or at the weekend is a luxury the country cannot afford.

The CPF describes itself as a national party group that gives members the opportunity to discuss the major policy challenges facing Britain and is chaired by Cabinet Office Minister Oliver Letwin.

Health experts reacted angrily to the suggestions, according to the Independent on Sunday.

Dr Clare Gerada, chair of the Royal College of GPs, told the newspaper: "This was obviously written by someone who has never been unwell, or has never met people who work in the health service."

She added: "People come because they are ill or because we are asking them to come because we are concerned about them. What we should do is fund general practice sufficiently so that we can offer flexible appointment times."

Labour health spokesman Jamie Reed told the Independent on Sunday: "This paper, hidden away on their website, reveals the Tories' true agenda for the NHS. After throwing the NHS open to ever more privatisation with a wasteful and damaging reorganisation, it seems the Tories want to go even further.

"It's shocking that they are considering limiting the number of times patients can see their GP - changing the fundamental principle in the NHS constitution that access to the NHS is based on clinical need.

"The Tories have already wasted £3bn on a top-down reorganisation of the NHS and overseen a crisis in A&E - now they are consulting their members on opening up the NHS to even more competition, and making it harder for patients to see GPs in the evenings and at weekends."

A Conservative Party spokesman said: "This was simply a topic to provoke discussion and isn't Conservative Party policy."

It comes as government plans are to be unveiled that mean half of all medical students will be expected to become general practitioners.

Independent training organisation Health Education England (HEE) will be told to meet the 50 per cent target by March 2015, health minister Dan Poulter will announce.

Around 400 trainee medics a year become family doctors now, around 40 per cent, but ministers want to increase the rate so more patients can be treated locally rather than in hospital.

Dr Poulter will also announce plans for at least 50 per cent of student nurses to carry out community placements as part of their training to ensure they understand the importance of community care.

The plans, along with other training and education reforms, are expected to be unveiled in the HEE mandate, which is published on Tuesday.

It comes at a time of tense relations between the Government and GPs.

Earlier this week the Royal College of General Practitioners warned funding was being "stretched to the limits", predicting that the money allocated to family doctors would fall by nearly £200 million over the next three years.

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt was also attacked for making childish claims about the role of GPs in exacerbating problems at overstretched accident and emergency departments.

Chairman of the British Medical Association's GPs committee Dr Laurence Buckman said the Tory Cabinet minister "keeps on tweeting and speaking a childishly superficial and misleading analysis of a very complex problem".

Mr Hunt, however, insisted problems seen in accident and emergency departments in recent months are partly the result of ageing demographics but also because out of hours care does not work properly under the 2004 GP contracts.

The NHS staff training blueprint is part of the Government's strategy to ensure more people with long-term illnesses, such as diabetes and respiratory diseases, and disabilities can be treated at home or in the community.

According to the Department of Health there is growing medical evidence that up to a third of older patients currently in hospitals do not need to be there.

Dr Poulter said: "We need a modern, caring NHS that puts patients first and offers them the most appropriate and effective treatment.

"For many conditions, particularly those linked to an ageing population with more long-term medical needs, this will mean less time in hospital and more time being treated at home.

"It is essential that we have the right staff to meet these changing needs, to ensure that we have set ambitious but achievable targets to make sure the NHS has a workforce fit for the future to deliver the highest quality of care to patients."

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