GPs warn of surgery closures in England and fear similar fate to NHS dentistry
https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/jul/28/gps-warn-of-surgery-closures-in-england-and-fear-similar-fate-to-nhs-dentistry
Posted by masterblaster0
GPs warn of surgery closures in England and fear similar fate to NHS dentistry
https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/jul/28/gps-warn-of-surgery-closures-in-england-and-fear-similar-fate-to-nhs-dentistry
Posted by masterblaster0
8 Comments
Tl;Dr version.
UK GPs are paid just 30p per patient per day which the surgeries say isn’t enough to cover costs.
Many GP surgeries are closing down or converting to private where they can charge £45 per GP appointment instead.
This problem probably won’t be solved by Wes Streeting who favours further privatisation, and Labour has no spare budget to throw at Britain’s spiralling medical care costs as the population ages rapidly. Labour also say they won’t increase taxes either.
Free at the point of service healthcare will be gone within a decade and visiting the GP will be much like going to a dentist today – the only local options will all be private and charge per appointment, whilst any remaining “free” options will have waiting lists stretching for months/years.
Part of the problem is alot of people take the NHS for granted and try and benefit financially from it.
Patients who make appointments and dont turn up is a problem and costs the NHS money
3rd party contractors and suppliers who charge well over the odds for goods and services because its the NHS
And staff themselves. I work in a department that employs hundreds of people, with a budget running into hundreds of millions whose sole job it is to identify and recover money from staff claiming for things they arent entitled to. And we only have resources to spot a fraction of it
Throwing more money at the NHS is just putting a plaster on the issues.
People should have to pay £10 for a GP appointment.
It will reduce people going to GPs for every little problem and also stop no shows.
About 7.2MM GP appts are missed each year. That’s a shit ton of time and money lost.
I have been in a GP surgery for ten years that was owned by one of the doctors that practiced there. It was absolutely incredible, same day appointments available until 2pm in the afternoon, non of this insanity that you have to call at 8am on the dot and wait on hold for an hour.
The owner retired last year and sold the surgery to a corporate company and they have stripped all the staff and closed off toilets etc etc. I had an appointment with a doctor a few weeks ago and they just blasted the new owners and say they’ve ruined such a fantastic surgery.
So my theory is that the money that is paid to these surgery’s probably is absolutely enough to run a good surgery, but the corporate owners just demand an unreasonable amount of profit because how else will get take millions in pay and bonuses or whatever.
Free at the point healthcare needs to be dead and buried 6 feet deep.
It’s 2024, everyone is getting older, living longer, more and more pressure and costs going up. The healthcare model we know needs to change
Id be curious to see how much introducing a £10 co pay like we have for prescriptions, a late fee, etc would reduce this burden.
People have to start paying more into the nhs if they want it to exist.
Hilarious if they think people will pay to go see a GP privately at the same levels with the same service
Especially if we could pay for a specialist referral without the GP getting involved
Many will close and go out of business for good if the NHS funding stopped as they are useless
Mine sends a text from a ‘clinician’ or non doctor for most appointment requests
The salary of a GP are usually over a 100k a year, I’m sure they will be fine…
And this is talking about salaried doctors not the partnerships that many surgeries are which can be around the 300k mark…