Reversing the spiral of dissatisfaction in access to general practice—what can the new government do?
As the dust settles following the election, it is time to work out how pre-election promises, hopes, and intentions for the NHS will be turned into reality. The problem of huge public dissatisfaction with general practice access was clearly and explicitly recognised in the Labour party manifesto.1 While no one is in any doubt about the challenge, the long back-catalogue of previous attempts offers little confidence that improving access will be straightforward.2 In seeking to find solutions, it’s clear that hard questions need to be asked about priorities and about what the general practice offer to the public should comprise. One of these hard questions concerns the right balance between planned prevention activities (e.g. screening and risk reduction) and disease management for specific long term conditions on one hand, and reactive capacity to respond to emergent symptoms, acute needs, and other …
