Collective Action and what does it mean for you

Over the past few months, you may have heard updates about GP Collective Action and the changes it will introduce to GP Practices nationally. We would like to reassure you that access to appointments at your MVMG Surgery will remain unchanged.

As a practice, we have long upheld clear boundaries regarding the workload managed by our healthcare professionals, including the responsibility for starting medications or investigations initiated by secondary care remains with those providers. As a result, the impact of collective action on your access to our surgeries will be minimal. We want to reassure you that while these changes are significant to the roles within General Practices play, any notable changes affecting Mendip Vale, and our patients will be communicated to you.

Why is collective action needed?

There are three main areas of concern for GP Practices:

Patient Safety: The numbers of patient consultations completed in a day means that surgeries are not practising as safely as they would like.

Workforce: The huge workload is making it difficult to recruit and retain staff, and levels of burnout are high

Funding: Practices are not being funded sufficiently to recruit more staff for the demand they are facing.

Practices are not being funded sufficiently to recruit more staff for the demand they are facing.

What this means for patients:

Changes that some patients may see across the country.

  • Practices will return work to other healthcare providers where they should have completed that part of care. This includes referrals, fit notes, starting prescriptions, investigations, and responding to patient queries.
  • Practices will not take over prescribing medications that were started by specialists, unless there is funding for this work.
  • Practices will not provide monitoring checks for certain conditions, where this should be done by your hospital/specialist team.
  • Practices will work towards clinicians having a safe workload. This means they will not see more patients than they can cope with. There will probably be longer waits for routine appointments. If you need urgent care, you may be directed to an urgent treatment centre or a pharmacy, depending on what is wrong.

How you can help:

Many minor illnesses can be managed by community pharmacy. This short video will tell you about the Pharmacy First scheme.

Consider phoning NHS 111 to find the best place to get help with your symptoms.

Please be kind to our staff. They want to help you get the care you need and will do everything they can to do that.