With the NHS under increasing pressure to provide an ever improved level of service, there are plans for 7,500 existing GP practices in the UK to become 1,500 ‘Super Practices’. So what does the future hold for primary care services in the UK, and what issues need to be overcome from a logistical and estates standpoint? Adam Thompson, director at Primary Care Surveyors, specialists in the healthcare property market, investigates, and explains the issues with which the NHS and GPs will have to contend.
Under Government plans to expand opening times and drive transformation in the primary care sector, thousands of GP practices are destined for closure, with 7,500 surgeries envisaged to become 1,500 ‘Super Practices’ within the next five years. This drive is part of a campaign to improve access to services, with more services being provided in the community, together with increased access to GPs at evenings and weekends, under a manifesto pledge to offer all patients appointments between 8.00 am and 8.00 pm, seven days a week – but that is not the whole story.
With cuts to budgets for social care, an ageing population (there are more than one million additional people over the age of 65 than five years ago), and a ‘retirement bubble’ in the GP sector that sees practitioners retiring and leaving the sector for good with no natural succession, the NHS is under pressure. Factor in urban regeneration, the Government’s initiatives to sanction greenfield developments across the UK, increases in immigration over the last 20 years, and a shift for current GPs towards ‘part-time’ working, and it seems there is necessity for a change of practice.
Complex reasons
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