GP partners/contractors in England have voted overwhelmingly in favour of collective action. Seven in ten eligible members voted in the non-statutory ballot with 98.3% of members voting yes.
The BMA now urges GP partners/contractors to start taking at least one of the easy, safe and sustainable actions proposed below.
Collective action will turn up the pressure on the Government to do the right thing for general practice and patients. We need a new contract that is fit for purpose.
What we want: our vision
We need a contract that offers the investment and workforce needed to reset general practice and provide patients with family doctors.
We have had several meetings with the new Secretary of State, and shared our vision for the future of general practice. We remain open to continuing discussions. Our vision has been informed by our conversations with thousands of GPs across our roadshows in recent weeks. You can view the recording if you were unable to attend a roadshow.
GP partner/contractor collective action: 10 actions you can take
Choose which actions to take
GPC England is not recommending which action(s) practices take. It is for each practice to pick and choose as they see fit. You may decide to add to your choices over the days, weeks, and months ahead. This is a marathon, not a sprint.
Some of these actions can be permanent changes – professional, collective and a single opportunity to embrace sustainable and safe change. Others may be de-escalated following negotiations with the new Government.
Limit daily patient contacts per clinician to the UEMO recommended safe maximum of 25.
Divert patients to local urgent care settings once daily maximum capacity has been reached. We strongly advise consultations are offered face-to-face. This is better for patients and clinicians
Serve notice on any voluntary services currently undertaken that plug local commissioning gaps and stop supporting the system at the expense of your business and staff.
Withdraw permission for data sharing agreements that exclusively use data for secondary purposes (i.e. not direct care). Read our guidance on GP data sharing and GP data controllership.
Freeze sign-up to any new data sharing agreements or local system data sharing platforms. Read our guidance on GP data sharing and GP data controllership.
Unless it is a timely and clinically helpful process in your professional role.
- Refer, investigate or admit your patient for specialist care when it is clinically appropriate to do so.
- Refer via eRS for two-week wait (2WW) appointments, but outside of that write a professional referral letter in place of any locally imposed proformas or referral forms where this is preferable. It is not contractual to use a local referral form/proforma – quote our guidance and sample wording
Switch off GPConnect Update Record functionality that permits the entry of coding into the GP clinical record by third-party providers.
This is embedded by the local ICB for the purposes of system financial savings and/or rationing (rather than the clinical benefit of your patients).
- Defer signing off “Simpler online requests” until Spring 2025: do not agree to keep your online triage tools on throughout core practice opening hours, even when you have reached your maximum safe capacity.
Defer making any decisions to accept local or national NHSE Pilot programmes whilst we explore opportunities with the new Government.
Update: Better digital telephony
Note on ”Better digital telephony”: the contract variation notices ICBs will have sent in August mean you are contractually required to have enabled date extraction by 1 October 2024. Read the GPCE update on this here.
Will any of these actions potentially result in a breach notice to my practice?
GPCE is not currently calling on GP contractors / partners to take any action that will place GP contractors in breach of their contract. Therefore, GPCE does not expect participating practices to be issued with breach notices.
This is instead an opportunity for a collective professional reset, to draw a line in the sand and say 'no more'. It's not a strike, it's not a crash diet - this is more a lifestyle modification. It's going to continue this way; it's not just for the summer. It is until the new Government comes to the table and agrees a new contract that is safe for patients and GP practice staff.
We hope we never get there, and the new Government listens to our reasonable proposals, but further steps could involve escalation to contract breach actions, e.g. action short of strike or strike action. This may include Salaried GP members, GP Registrar members or other practice clinical staff. GPs who exclusively locum are unlikely to be directed to refuse to take on new work, which would leave them without any income.
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