General Practitioners
(asked on 29th October 2015) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what regions he has identified as having a shortage of GPs; and what steps he is taking to address those shortfalls.
Health Education England (HEE) has advised that they have identified six local offices experiencing low fill rates of general practitioner (GP) trainees. These are: Yorkshire; East Midlands; West Midlands; North East; East of England; and HEE Wessex (Isle of Wight only).
Data on GP vacancies is not currently held but collection of this data is under development by the Department and the Health and Social Care Information Centre as part of the Workforce Minimum Dataset.
NHS England, HEE, the Royal College of General Practitioners and the British Medical Association’s GPs Committee are working closely together to ensure that there is a skilled, trained and motivated workforce in general practice. In January 2015, the four organisations jointly published a ten point action plan to address immediate issues, and to take the initial steps in building the workforce for the future and new models of care.
There are three strands to this work: improving recruitment into general practice; retaining doctors within general practice; supporting those who wish to return to general practice.
As part of the plan, NHS England launched a new national returner scheme, which has attracted 120 applicants so far. A marketing campaign to highlight the benefits of a career in general practice was launched in September 2015. Further initiatives will be announced by the ten point plan partners in due course.
The plan, “Building the Workforce” is available on NHS England’s website: