GP Contract

Baroness Browning Excerpts

Tuesday 17th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Browning (Con)]

Is there any monitoring of when GPs insist on a telephone call rather than a face-to-face meeting, or when things are sent by email to the surgery and they are then triaged by others rather than their normal GP? Is there any identifying of just how many cases they miss of those very serious conditions that subsequently end in serious illness or even death? I am particularly thinking of such things as sepsis, where the symptoms are not always so overt to begin with as they are as the disease progresses. Is there any monitoring of how successful these new systems are in picking up those types of diseases?

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

All the systems are under constant review. It might be helpful if I point out to the noble Baroness that one of the key things in the GP contract for 2026-27 is the requirement for all clinically urgent patients to be dealt with on the same day. That is not required currently; I think that will make a huge difference. Again, I emphasise that we will not be defining “clinically urgent”: it will be down to practices to use their clinical judgment, and that is the right place.