To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking (a) in response to increases in demand for GP services and (b) to support GPs to meet that demand.
Answered on
9 November 2021
On 14 October we published ‘Our plan for improving access for patients and supporting general practice’ to assist patients to see or speak to general practitioners and their teams, through a new £250 million Winter Access Fund.
We have committed additional funding to NHS England to implement the adoption of cloud-based telephony technology across all practices. These systems can benefit patients by making more phone lines available and providing automated queueing, and allow practices determine the administrative support they need for call handling.