Primary Care Joint Action

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Primary Care Joint Action as per BMA

The BMA (British Medical Association) is the body who represent, support and negotiate on behalf of all UK doctors therefore includes General Practitioners.

You may or may not be aware of the current work going on with the BMA who are negotiating with the government regarding the funding (or lack of) coming into General Practice. The funding that then pays for our staff and resources to provide the care to our patients. This is why we haven’t had our April uplift yet, because there hasn’t been a decision of what funding the GPs practices are getting, to be able to pass on to staff in terms of a yearly uplift.

There was a vote that took place recently across the country (by GPs and GP partners) about whether to reject the uplift that had been offered to Primary Care as not sufficient to enable practices to continue to provide the services it is contracted to do. The vote was overwhelmingly to reject the current uplift offer. Therefore, there are plans for joint action across surgeries nationwide. Not industrial (strike action) as such, more looking to re-set how we work and what conditions we work under, if the funding is not to increase.

All the partners and practice managers of Hereford practices met together last week. A decision was made that all practices would write individually to the Integrated Care Board (ICB), who are our commissioning body, to inform them that as of 1st August 2024 we would be ‘re-setting’ and working to safe working practices as per the BMA guidelines.

What are the guidelines for ‘safe working practice’?


The BMA suggests 25 contacts per day (per clinician). So in theory once a GP has seen or spoken to 25 patients we close the list for that day. We will be pragmatic about this of course, and patient safety will always be key. For instance if there is a sick child under the age of 16, vulnerable or a palliative patient we would never turn this away. But otherwise we will be re-directing patients to 111 once the limit is reached.