Hot on the heels of NHS England’s announcement of plans to improve patient care and access and invest in new ways of providing primary care, reactions from the GP community have been out in force.
Its five-year vision contains specific steps to strengthen workforce, drive efficiencies in workload, modernise infrastructure and technology, and redesign the way modern primary care is offered to patients.
The plans include a shared commitment between NHS England, CQC and the GMC to reduce workload and streamline processes to avoid duplication of regulation of general practice in England.
In response, the General Medical Council (GMC) is welcoming the changes.
Niall Dickson, Chief Executive of the General Medical Council, said, ‘GPs in England are under huge strain at the moment and it is vital that we keep the workload associated with regulation to a minimum.
‘This plan commits us, the Care Quality Commission and NHS England to work more closely together to reduce and align the requirements that we place on general practice. It is important that we address any unnecessary overlaps as well as gaps.
‘Separately we are carefully evaluating the impact of revalidation. We recently commissioned Sir Keith Pearson to carry out a review bringing together all the evidence to help us shape revalidation in the future.
‘We can see that it is beginning to have a positive impact, not least through much higher appraisal rates and huge support from responsible officers, who run the system – but of course it is not perfect. This is to be expected – this ambitious system, which is designed to help doctors reflect on and improve their practice only started just over three years ago.’
