In what comes as a shocking development, a new research has revealed that the NHS in England is heading towards a "tipping point" after GPs will no longer be able to attend patients. The research further showed that one in five surgeries has shut and the number of patients for every family doctor have only surged in the past decade.

The researchers from University College London and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) warned, "Falling GP numbers delivering the same number of appointments per 1,000 patients seems unsustainable. Therefore there is likely to be a tipping point in the near future where the majority of appointments in English general practice are no longer delivered by GPs.”

The researchers found that the number of people registered with an NHS GP practice in England grew by 11% from 56,042,361 to 62,418,295 between 2013 and 2023. On the other hand, the total number of GP practices in England fell from 8,044 to 6,419 over the same period - witnessing a 20% drop.

As per the analysis, the average number of GPs for every 1,000 people in England has fallen from 0.53 to 0.45 – a drop of 15%. Prof Kamila Hawthorne, the chair of the Royal College of GPs, said the findings shows that the NHS needs to recruit more GPs and also do more to retain ones already working. “While GP workload is escalating, both in volume and complexity, this is falling to a smaller number of GPs than we had five years ago,” she said.

Meanwhile, there were reports of NHS planning to recruit up to 2,000 doctors from India on a fast-track basis in a bid to address the country's shortage of medical practitioners. According to a report by Business Standard, the NHS will be conducting postgraduate training for the first batch of doctors who will be assigned to hospitals in Britain after 6 to 12 months of training. These doctors will be excused from the Professional and Linguistic Assessments Board examination upon completion of the programme.

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