A LEADING town doctor said he believes GP practices will change ‘beyond belief’ in the next ten years, as it was revealed the area of general practice is being hit by underfunding

Peter Swinyard, from Toothill’s Phoenix Surgery has been a GP for more than 30 years and founded the surgery in 1995. He said the scope of a GP’s work had changed immeasurably during his time in the profession.

“I really enjoy what I do but it is becoming weighed with administrative duties which I don’t like doing . Last week I did two days of clinical work and one day of administration and that’s not the way it should be,” he said.

“Underfunding is having a massive effect and we are getting starved of resources so much it’s becoming more difficult to attract new doctors to come into GP practice.

“At our practice we are lucky that we do have a new GP who is a breath of fresh air but others aren’t so lucky.

“I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see the entire landscape of the GP practice change beyond belief in the next five years.

“GPs are important and do critical work and of course we want to do the best job possible but there is increasing pressure on the profession.

Dr Swinyard said his practice had encountered problems due to lack of funding

“The procedure when a practice runs out of funding is that salaried doctors and other staff will; be paid first but there may be nothing left to pay partners,” he said.

“I must congratulate Swindon CCG because they do their best and we are not as affected as others in the country

“We don’t want the community we care for to slip away from us and have more and more of our time taken up by administration work.”

A new survey from the Royal College of GPs showed general practice could lose funding due to underspending in clinical commissioning group (CCGs) budget

Dr Chaand Nagpaul, British Medical Association GP committee chair, said the government must act quickly to salvage GP practices.

“General practice is at breaking point. Many local GP surgeries are struggling to provide even basic care to their patients as they face a climate of shrinking budgets, staff shortages and rising workload.

“The government made clear promises in its recently announced General Practice Forward View to properly invest in GP services after a decade of neglect. It is vital that the government acts to deliver on its pledges, and ensures that patients can receive safe, timely and quality care from their GP surgery.”

In March, the BMA warned one in ten GP practices are at risk of closure.

NHS England has also formally identified over 800 GP practices as vulnerable as part of its work to allocate £10m worth of support funding.

This comes after concerns were raised around increased pressures on GPS, including mounting paperwork, patient load, dwindling resources and work hours

In August research, conducted on behalf of mental health charity Mind found nine out of 10 GPs and practice staff found their worklife stressful leading to 43 per cent resigning.

The report found two in five practice staff said workplace stress has led them to resign or consider resigning, and one in three felt that admitting to being overly stressed would mean they were perceived as less capable than their colleagues.

It also revealed one in 10 had suicidal thoughts as a consequence of workplace stress.