UK family doctors vote to limit services to patients in a dispute over funding

LONDON (AP) — Family doctors in England have voted to limit the number of patients they see and refuse extra work to protest a “broken” funding model, their union said Thursday.

The British Medical Association said 98.3% of the 8,500 general practitioners who voted backed the work-to-rule action, which falls just short of a strike. The open-ended action is due to start immediately.

The state-funded National Health Service said doctors’ offices would remain open and the impact would vary from place to place.

The union described the collective action as “an act of desperation.” It said a new contract between doctors and the government, which will see services given a 1.9% funding increase for 2024-25, means many practices will struggle to stay financially viable. Doctors’ practices are funded by the government and run as independent businesses.

“We are witnessing general practice being broken,” said Dr. Katie Bramall-Stainer, chair of the union’s general practice committee for England. “The era of the family doctor has been wiped out by recent consecutive governments and our patients are suffering as a result.”

The Labour Party government elected last month has made a priority of ending more than a year of on-off strikes by public sector workers including teachers, nurses and hospital doctors, who say their pay has plummeted in real terms as their workload has grown due to increasing demand.

One of the government’s first acts was to strike a pay deal with junior doctors, who make up about half of the total medical workforce and form the backbone of hospital and clinic care. They will receive a 22% pay increase over two years in return for ending a series of strikes that piled pressure on the chronically overstretched National Health Service,

“GPs and their teams are the bedrock of the NHS, and we recognize they are working really hard and dealing with record demand,” said Dr. Amanda Doyle, NHS National Director for Primary Care and Community Services. She said the health service would “continue to work with government to find a resolution and end collective action.”