Investing in primary care

I am and always have been in complete favour of investing in general practice to expand capacity to manage both urgent care and planned care that presents to us increasingly in our work. To that extent Dr Baker and the RCGP are uncontroversial in wishing to have an 11% increase in investment. Indeed I have suggested a 12% shift of resources to primary care. Where the RCGP and its leadership are naive is in how this investment should be achieved. There is no new money, nor is there likely to be in the foreseeable future, whichever government takes over. So we need to shift activity out of hospital care to do this. In practice that means doing what we are doing in Central Manchester, and invest £1.4 million in extending primary care so that people can be seen there when they need to be seen. This means absorbing the urgent care demand, as well as the planned and long-term conditions demand on primary care. Here is an example of where meeting the needs of the people coincides with the needs of general practice and the NHS. Everyone is a winner.