On 1st August 2024, General Practice in England entered a period of GP collective action. More than 8,500 GPs in England took part in a ballot run by the British Medical Association; 98.3% voted in favour of taking part in collective action.

Collective action is not the same as industrial action but means that some GPs may stop or reduce certain work. Historically, practices have "over worked": that is, they have worked above and beyond their contracts to keep up with patient demand. Collective action will see this "over work" reduce or stop.

General Practice funding is less than £108 per patient per year, this equates to at most 2-3 contacts per year per patient, compared to the cost of an outpatient appointment estimated to start at £130-£400, there is something about demand and reasonable expectation.  

The £108 per patient, is to run practice premises and employ staff, this is not enough for GPs to employ enough staff to give patients the care they deserve.  The financial situation is unsustainable, with many Practices having to shut, because they cannot afford to keep going

1. You may experience changes around:

   • Prescriptions initiated by hospital or specialist doctors
   • Blood tests requested by hospital or specialist doctors

   Prescriptions

   Please see here what to expect when you attend a specialist doctor appointment at the hospital.

   If the specialist prescribes a new drug, or changes the dose, they will provide the first prescription. You might need to collect it from the hospital pharmacy.

   However, over the years it has unfortunately become the cultural norm in Leeds that specialist doctors do not “write” (electronically) their own first prescription, but instead ask the GP to do it. Along with most other GPs in Leeds, back at Christmas we gave notice that from April we would no longer do this unfunded work which can take hours each week.

   This is also safer for the patient.

   General Practice in Leeds has been working with the local hospitals and other healthcare providers over the last 3 months to enable each clinical service to identify any gaps or barriers and review prescribing operations to mitigate any patient risk. There should now be safe, suitable ways of issuing first prescriptions from all services.

   Blood tests

   Please see here what to expect when you attend a specialist doctor appointment at the hospital.

   Similarly, bloods tests that are ordered by a hospital or specialist doctor, should be administered by them. This means that it is the requesting hospital or specialist doctor who must place their request into the pathology lab request system. This is the only way to ensure the results of these tests are delivered back to that requesting doctor, in order that the requesting doctor can follow up those test results with the  patient.

   Over the years it has unfortunately become the cultural norm in Leeds that specialist doctors do not place their requests into the pathology lab request system but instead ask GPs to do it. The result of this is that the results wrongly come back to the GP, and patients are given the impression that it is the GPs responsibility to follow up the results of these tests. Along with most other GPs in Leeds, back at Christmas we gave notice that from April we would no longer do this unfunded work. It is the requesting doctor’s responsibility to place their request on

   Nb that this does not affect WHERE the blood  test takes place. Once the specialist doctors has placed their requests into the pathology lab request system, we are perfectly happy for the patient to attend the practice to have their blood taken by our Clinical Support Workers.

Despite warning the Government that we’re being forced to do more with less, General Practice has not been given the funding it needs to handle growing pressures.

Here at St Martins, the Appointment Hub system that we introduced in September 2023 brought our daily workload within our acceptable safe limits. However, we continue to feel workload pressures from:

• The number of patients who are waiting to book an appointment with us: we are unable to meet patient demand
• increasing administration often caused by pressures in other parts of the health and care system which takes our time and attention away from our patients and from doing the things that will make a difference to their wellbeing.

We have joined Collective Action as we believe that General Practice joining with one voice, may prompt the new Government to hear us.