Last summer, Health Education England identified missing its general practitioner (GP) recruitment target as the ‘greatest risk’ to the NHS. The organization’s improved marketing efforts and plans to build multidisciplinary teams to relieve pressures on GPs has paid off, however: 2017 recruitment is 3.5 percent higher than it was in 2016.
An increase in the number of GPs will help support a new NHS requirement that all hospitals in England have a GP-led triage system by October 2017. This change is part of an attempt to reduce emergency department (ED) wait times and free up EDs to care for the most urgent patients.