At the Reading Health and Wellbeing Board on Friday, 19th January 2024, Sarah Webster, BOB Place Director for Berkshire West reported that the number of registered patients per full-time equivalent GP in the BOB area had reached 3,250. As some of us can remember when 1,500 was the norm, this is more than a doubling.
While there are additional clinicians now employed by surgeries and Primary Care Networks(PCNs), and efforts to bring community pharmacies into giving primary care, it seems unlikely that these could compensate for the enormous rise in the ratio of patients to GPs.
The NHS workforce strategy does envisage an increase in training of doctors, but without better retention and work demands we will hardly see this situation improve.