This article written by Medi2data is also featured on the Convenzis Group website, which you can find here.

As Primary Care continues to be squeezed for all its resources, the working day of a GP gets longer and longer. To fully understand the pressures placed upon GPs, it can be helpful to scale back and look at their working days to analyse where efficiencies can be made.

What can a day look like for a GP?

A day in the life of a GP can reflect the following (schedule taken from The Kings Fund, 2018):

• 7:30-8:15am: Arrive in surgery and begin 45 minutes of paperwork: looking through correspondence, discharge summaries, out-of-hours reports and test results.
• 8:15-9:00am: 45 minutes taking telephone triage calls for people requesting same-day appointments, requesting home visits or chasing test results.
• 9.00-1.00pm: Morning surgery, the GP sees 18 patients.
• 1:00-1:45pm: Finish morning surgery, moving onto a home visit.
• 1:45-2:15pm: Sitting down with the registrar for a brief supervision.
• 2:15-3:00pm: Catching up on admin paperwork, including referrals, clinic letters, prescriptions, and lab results. The GP eats their lunch at their desk.
• 3:00-3:30pm: Calling back patients who had called earlier in the day.
• 3:30-5:30pm: Afternoon surgery, the GP sees 12 patients. 
• 5:30-6:30pm: Making phone calls.
• 6:30-7:00pm: Sitting with registrar to discuss patients and do some brief teaching.
• 7:00-7:45pm: Dealing with emails and other paperwork. 
• 7:45pm: GP leaves for the day.

This is just scratching the surface of what a day can look like for a GP, with many staff working 12+ hour days to get through all their admin tasks and ensure all patients have been seen (whether in clinic/home visits). With six in ten GPs reporting that they don’t have enough time to adequately assess and treat patients (RCGP, 2024), it’s no surprise that the current state of the GP work day needs some urgent attention.

Why is the workload so high?

There are many reasons for the GP workload increasing every year, but some key factors include (statistics taken from the BMA, 2024):

1. A decrease in the number of practices:

1387 practices have closed since 2015, for reasons not limited to partner retirements and recruitment issues.

2. Increasing patients per GP:

There has been an increase of 333 more patients per GP since September 2015, now sitting at an average of 2271 patients per single full-time GP.

3. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic:

368.9 million appointments including COVID-19 vaccinations have been booked in England alone between November 2023 to October 2024, with GPs delivering 162.2 million of these appointments. 

4. GPs leaving the NHS:

The NHS has lost the equivalent of 1333 full-time fully qualified GPs since 2015. 

Why is this such an issue?

Between the factors above alongside the increasing volume of admin tasks, GPs are experiencing burnout and are becoming more stressed with their increasing workload. Not only is burnout a problem for the GP, but also a problem for the patient. 

Burnout has been associated with a 17% higher likelihood of being involved in a medical malpractice lawsuit (RCGP, 2024), as well as an increased probability of reporting a significant medical error. Additionally, the RCGP have reported that 76% of GPs say that patient safety is being compromised by their excessive workloads (RCGP, 2024). It is therefore imperative that staff are adequately supported to prevent these issues, not just for the safety of the patient, but also the GP.

The impact of this issue also spreads further into the healthcare system, with many patients choosing to use emergency services like A&E to get seen quicker, which places more strain on secondary care.

How can we improve?

To begin improving the problem of GP burnout, we need to look at how we can support GPs in their daily tasks. Tasks like seeing patients and completing test charts are non-negotiable, but there are ways to cut time in the day on administrative tasks.

One way to do this is outsourcing.

Outsourcing can play a very useful role in Primary Care, as it can take away the burden placed on staff. In Medidata’s Expert Voices Within Primary Care, Martin Bell discusses that outsourcing can be very beneficial if the practice lacks the capability or the capacity to efficiently complete the task internally. 

Watch the full video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIdQBLn_GbQ 

A task that benefits from outsourcing? Look into your medical reporting first. 

As a piece of core admin within the GP practice, it’s a process that requires careful review, redaction of sensitive information, and can sometimes require clinical sign-off, taking up hours of valuable time within the practice that could be spent elsewhere. Additionally, medical reporting requires a strict adherence to data governance and security standards, making it an often mundane but time consuming task to complete accurately. 

Medi2data, your way into outsourcing.

One way to look into outsourcing is Medi2data’s eMR+ service, designed to make the medical reporting process simple. eMR+ customers realise time and cost savings within the practice, as well as completely digital medical reports, helping to digitally transform the practice. With full clinical review and sign-off on all reports paired with a strict governance and security framework, all reports are processed in a timely, secure, and efficient manner. 

If you’re a GP, or work within a GP practice, it’s definitely worth considering outsourcing your medical reporting as an easy way to reclaim back time and begin to tackle staff burnout. With eMR+, there’s even the possibility to keep the medical reporting revenue from insurance reports, so the practice won’t lose an income source – which is increasingly important as Primary Care funding is few and far between. 

If you’d like some further information on how the eMR+ service works, get in touch with the Medi2data team and they will send you an info pack.

What’s next?

Significant challenges remain in general practice and Primary Care, but a key step forward is streamlining the GP’s working day. By reducing inefficiencies and administrative burdens, we can ease some strain and allow staff to focus more on patient care.

This isn’t just about supporting GPs – it’s about ensuring safer, higher-quality care for patients and building a more resilient healthcare system. By prioritising smarter systems and better support, we can create a Primary Care model that works better for everyone.

Sources:

1. Dr Colin Tidy for Patient, 2023: Burnout in Primary Care https://patient.info/doctor/burnout-in-primary-care#complications-of-burnout-in-primary-care
2. British Medical Association, 2024: Pressures in general practice https://www.bma.org.uk/advice-and-support/nhs-delivery-and-workforce/pressures/pressures-in-general-practice-data-analysis#:~:text=As%20of%20October%202024%2C%201%2C387,mounting%20workload%20in%20general%20practice.
3. Royal College of General Practitioners, 2024: GP workloads a threat to patient safety, finds College: https://www.rcgp.org.uk/News/GP-workloads-threaten-patient-safety  
4. The Kings Fund, 2018: An alternative day in the life of a GP https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/insight-and-analysis/articles/alternative-day-life-gp
5. Martin Bell for Medi2data, 2024: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIdQBLn_GbQ