The amount of money allocated to GPs for patient care is set to fall by £200million over the next three years, the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) announced late last week.
The money would be equivalent to the current spend on 1.2 million patients, according to RCGP leaders predictions.
The proportion of NHS funding being spend on general practice has been falling for successive years, RCGP warn.
The predictions are based on RCGP calculations between 2011/12 to 2015/16 at 2011/2012 prices.
RCGP Chair Dr Clare Gerada, said: “General practice is the most effective and cost-effective way of providing patient care – a whole day’s care in general practice costs one tenth of a day in hospital.
“But funding and resources for our services is being stretched to the limits, with family doctors facing ballooning workloads, record hours being worked in surgery and real consequences for patient care.”
Only 9% of the NHS budget in England was spent on general practice in 2010/11, even though GPs see over 1 million patients per day and 90% of all NHS activity takes place in general practice.
The breakdown of NHS spending for 2010/11 for A&E and acute care was 47%, and a further 19% was spent on other secondary care such as maternity and mental health, with 10% spent on community care.
