Haygarth Medical CentresOur Save our surgeries campaign asks the Welsh Government to commit to a rescue package for General Practice
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Welsh
About the campaign
General practice is being forced to try and cope with inadequate resources, an unsustainable workload, and a workforce under pressure across the whole of Wales, with some areas in crisis. Burnout and attrition are impacting upon the profession and exacerbating these issues.
Much of the ongoing commentary related to General Practice revolves around access. However, access is merely a symptom of the real issue, which is capacity. Current inadequate capacity in the face of unrelenting demand is a product of longstanding workload, workforce, and well-being issues, which correlate to the chronic underfunding of general medical services.
Our Save Our Surgeries campaign asks Welsh Government to commit to a rescue package for General Practice, to provide GPs and their patients with the support they need.
Key calls
- Commit to funding General Practice properly, restoring the proportion of the NHS Wales budget spent in general practice to the historic level of 8.7% within three years, with an aspiration to increase to nearer 11% in the next five years.
- Invest in the workforce of General Practice to allow the implementation of a national standard for a maximum number of patients that GPs can reasonably deal with during a working day to maintain safe and high-quality service delivery.
- Produce a workforce strategy to ensure that Wales trains, recruits and retains enough GPs to move toward the OECD average number of GPs per 1000 people. This must feature a renewed focus on retaining existing GPs and tackling the problems driving them out of the profession.
- Address staff wellbeing by producing a long-term strategy to improve the physical, mental, and emotional well-being of the workforce.