GP Practices are facing severe shortfalls in funding that have been cumulative over recent years.  This is causing some practices to collapse and hand back their NHS contracts.  This then puts even more pressure on the surviving practices, who then take the extra work, and patients, who then find it even more difficult to get an appointment.

We are very limited in the action we can take – no strike action is planned. We are taking some 'work to rule' steps in order to escalate our dispute with NHS England/Department of Health.

Queens Road will not be capping appointment numbers as such, but when we consider our service to be full, patients will be re-directed to 111. We are taking action over our referral process which should be easier and more efficient for the GP, and less accepting of consultant advice-only replies to our referrals, where then your GP has to carry out further tests, follow-up and onward management, and requesting more consultant appointments from our referrals. We are not engaging with non-NHS services requiring prescriptions, follow-up, and monitoring.

Overall, we will be continuing to try and do our best for patient's interests.

Please see the BMA website for further information. There is useful overview here