Around 55% of patients who needed an appointment said they had avoided making one in the past 12 months, up from 42% in 2021. More than a quarter had not made an appointment because they found it too difficult , 11 percent. cent in 2021.
Professor Martin Marshall, chair of the RCGP, said there were now 1,500 fewer qualified and full-time equivalent GPs than five years ago, leaving staff “working to their absolute limits”.
The figures show 25.9 million appointments in June, down from 27.6 million inquiries in May, up from 24.7 million in the month before the first lockdown.
The figures show that more than 44% were same-day appointments.
The situation is likely to worsen
Dr Marshall said: “Working at this intensity is unsustainable and unsafe for both patients and staff.
“A burnt-out GP cannot practice safely or provide the high-quality care and services they are trained and want to provide to patients. This leads to GPs and other members of our teams becoming burnt out and to evaluate their future working in general practice, in some cases leaving the profession earlier than expected and in others reducing the contracted hours to make the work more sustainable.
“However, working ‘part-time’ in general practice often means working what would normally be considered full-time or longer, and will likely include many hours of paperwork in addition to patient appointments.”
He said the “sad reality” was that the situation was likely to get worse, with surveys suggesting nearly 19,000 GPs could leave the profession within five years.
The RCGP is calling for increased funding for GPs and a reduction in red tape.
The figures, which were published by NHS Digital on Thursday, also show that the total number of qualified permanent GPs in England fell from 27,912 in June 2017 to 26,859 in June 2022, a fall of 4%.
All figures are based on the number of full-time equivalent posts in the GP workforce and do not include trainees or substitutes.
Figures show the NHS is increasingly reliant on doctors over 60, as the number of 50-year-olds falls as increasing numbers seek early retirement.
While the number of GPs aged 50 to 59 fell from 30% to 28%, the number aged 60 and over rose from eight to 10%.
A spokesman for the Department of Health and Social Care said: “Building our GP workforce is essential to the health of the country, which is why we are focusing on recruiting and retaining those working in general practice, and have saw nearly 1,500 more full-time equivalent physicians in general practice in June 2022 compared to June 2019.
“There are record numbers of GPs in training and we have increased the number of funded medical school places by 25 per cent over three years to 2020, and we will start to see the first wave of these students entering basic training starting this year.”