Our surgeries are woefully underfunded

If you’re wondering why GPs like me are struggling to provide a decent level of care, says Prit Buttar, look no further than this striking statistic: over the past decade, the number of times the average patient visits his or her GP each year has doubled. That’s right: doubled. Yet the funding that doctors’ practices receive has “barely risen”. There’s the problem in a nutshell. Unlike hospital doctors, GPs aren’t usually employed by the NHS. Their practices work like businesses: they get a set sum of money per patient (a mere £146 a year, on average) from which to pay all costs and wages. That’s nowhere near enough to deal with current levels of demand. GPs used to get small extra payments for minor procedures such as removing warts or skin tags. Not any more: they now have to do them for free or not at all. So fewer get done. No matter that many patients would happily pay their GP for such non-urgent procedures, the rules forbid GPs from accepting payments. It’s unsustainable. If ministers won’t fund GPs properly, patients must be allowed to help fund the system themselves.