GP surgery closures have reached an all-time high across the UK, with 138 GP surgeries – covering over half a million patients - closing for good last year, a rise of 800% on the closure rate five years ago, according to a new survey released by GP magazine Pulse. Smaller surgeries in particular are vanishing.
The news follows reports earlier this month that GP numbers are dropping and NHS General Practice is disintegrating, bolstered by findings from the Nuffield Trust that painted an unmistakeable picture. Their findings, and the reaction and analysis they provoked, highlighted not just inaccessible appointments and almost vanished personal continuity of care. They also portrayed an alarmingly depleted and dispirited workforce: career abandonment, early retirement, sickness and burnout are all reliable indicators.
Why is this? Practitioners and pundits reiterate the usual, now familiar reasons: mostly how funding for our NHS has not matched the increasing demands made of it. Those burgeoning demands come from our increasing longevity with its incurred chronic conditions, the increased expectations that come with advancing technology in our consumerist society, and the mushrooming of mental health problems amidst all this.
