GP Collective Action information

We appreciate many of our patients may have read about GP Collective Action on the news and have concerns.

Please be reassured we are not on strike, we are working as hard as ever and have not opted to change the number of appointments we provide or how our patients access care with us.

Most of the actions we have chosen to take involve how we interface with other parts of the NHS.

We expect the main changes our patients will notice will be us asking hospitals to take more responsibility for arranging any tests required by hospital clinics (for example, blood tests) and asking hospital clinics to provide prescriptions for  specialist clinic medications.

We are above capacity with regards to the work level we currently do and cannot accept doing more work on behalf or hospitals or specialist clinics without risking things becoming unsafe and mistakes happening. Therefore, for the foreseeable future we will not be able to accept any new requests for Shared Care Agreements for specialist clinic medications and we will be asking the hospital clinic specialist to continue providing prescriptions for you (this only applies to specialist medications that require specific ongoing specialist care and monitoring). This will not affect patients who already have established Shared Care prescribing with us. 

We know access to appointments and GP services is frustrating and we want to be able to provide you with the best health care we can; we believe fighting for a better deal for GP surgeries that will protect them and prevent them closing is the best way to do this.

The Partners – Papworth Surgery