Increased Funding For GPs

£2.4bn funding boost to help GP surgeries “get back on their feet” and to improve access for patients.

16:47 25 April 2016

NHS chiefs in England have announced a five-year plan that involves a £2.4bn a year funding boost by 2020 to help GP surgeries “get back on their feet.” The rescue package, which is a 14per cent increase once inflation is taken into account, will pay for 5,000 additional GPs and extra staff to boost practices. 

 

The announcement came after warnings that the future of general practice was at real risk.

 

At the unveiling of the GP strategy, NHS England chief executive Simon Stevens, said: "GPs are by far the largest branch of British medicine and as a recent British Medical Journal headline put it - if general practice fails, the whole NHS fails.

 

"So if anyone 10 years ago had said, 'Here's what the NHS should now do - cut the share of funding for primary care and grow the number of hospital specialists three times faster than GPs,' they'd have been laughed out of court.

 

"But looking back over a decade that's exactly what's happened. Now we need to act and this plan sets out exactly how."