Surgeries in England have a shortfall of 14% practice managers and a 23% shortfall of GPs, a new report launched today has revealed.
And despite practice managers stating they need to hire new GPs, 45% have said they cannot afford to recruit. A further 37% have said lack of surgery space is hampering their ability to employ more doctors since squeezed finances means they can’t update premises.
The white paper report launched by Cogora, which publishes Management in Practice and Pulse, is a deep delve into the general practice workforce crises.
It uncovers the anomaly ‘there is both a shortage of GPs in the system, and a shortage of jobs for GPs’ despite there being no let up in patient demand.
More than 600 practices in England and 2,000 healthcare professionals in general practice and community pharmacy were surveyed for the report, which is being launched at a Parliamentary event today being held jointly with the Rebuild General Practice campaign and attended by MPs.
Findings showed that more than a quarter of salaried and locum GPs in England (26%) are currently looking for a permanent role – searching for seven months on average, but only finding just over two suitable roles in three months of looking.
Despite this unemployment, practice managers and GP partner respondents asked about full-time equivalent (FTE) current posts compared with the FTE roles that were needed reported a 16% shortfall in the numbers of GPs they require. For other clinical roles, it was found there is a 23% shortfall in practice nurses and 32% shortfall in the number of pharmacists. The shortfall stands at 14% for practice managers.
Meanwhile, GP practices in the 20% most deprived areas have 10% fewer clinical staff per 10,000 patients than those in the 20% least deprived, results showed.
The report said: ‘The reason there are few job vacancies is not that there is less demand for GPs’ services, but that practices lack funding and – increasingly – the premises space to house them.’
The fact that around around 6% of practices said they had to make redundancies in the past 12 months, while a further 20% decided not to replace outgoing staff due to tight finances will also be adding to pressures in the general practice labour market.
Additionally, the report highlights that the uncertainty on ‘the future scope’ of the Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme (ARRS) is not helping.
Directors of the Institute of General Practice Management (IGPM), which has supported the report, said: ‘We can see that the vacancy rate for practice managers currently sits at 14% and it’s worth noting that there is no one else in those practices doing the PM’s job. And with largely no locums or no other cover, there’s just a gap with other practice staff making do.’
‘We also know that over 50% of practice managers are considering leaving the profession in the next five years’, the directors added.
‘The IGPM is helping organisations to plan for this shortfall with projects in Cornwall looking at a programme of management training, and with Lincolnshire LMC focusing on apprentice practice managers.
‘Clinicians will agree that general practice fails without a competent, highly skilled leader and we must ensure our practice manager roles are linked to local and national workforce planning.’
The white paper’s six recommendations for improving workforce problems include for the Government to increase core funding, with ‘a greater share of the budget’ passed to practices in deprived areas; investment into expansion and improvement of GP premises; and the removal of restrictions on the hiring of ARRS roles.
Rebuild General Practice, which represents GPs from across England, Scotland and Wales campaigning for a long-term plan to make general practice fit for the future, has backed the report’s findings.
Dr Rachel Warrington, a GP from North Bristol who works in Mount Pleasant practice in South East Wales, said on behalf of Rebuild General Practice: ‘These findings reflect our day-in and day-out experiences as GPs. We desperately need more GPs within the system to meet this increasing patient demand, but we simply do not have the funding or the space in our local practices for recruiting GPs. This means our workloads have reached unsustainable and unsafe thresholds.’
‘We are urging the government to allocate fair, real-time funding to general practice and prioritise the retention of GPs’, she added.
Download our General Practice Workforce white paper here.
