Pressure on tightening budgets, the ageing workforce and ageing population are of growing concern when looking at the UK’s primary care workforce. The report from the Deloitte UK Centre for Health Solutions ‘Primary Care: Today and tomorrow’, launched in May 2012, presents the current and future challenges affecting the general practice workforce. The central proposition is the need for general practice to work differently, especially given the significant financial and NHS reform challenges facing them. In the UK, life expectancy is rising accompanied by increasingly complex health challenges and unprecedented levels of demand for services, exacerbated by policy initiatives requiring more care closer to home. At the same time the supply of GPs and practice nurses is diminishing. We propose a range of solutions involving new business models and incentives, and accelerated use of technologies, which shift the focus from providers to consumers. Some of the solutions are already being used by a number of GPs, and the challenge is to increase the scale of adoption, others are ideas and insights on how the future workforce might adapt more effectively to the changing needs and expectations of their patients.

Karen Taylor, Director of the Centre for Health Solutions presented the findings of the report at the National Association of Primary Care Clinical Commissioning Conference in June 2013; ‘Key Challenging Facing Practices – Adapting to Survive’. The report was also used to run a workshop with the British Medical Journal Leadership team, and the report was instrumental in helping Deloitte win three bids.

Feedback from the President of Royal College of GPs in November 2012, Clare Gerada said,

"This scholarly and excellent report demonstrates the importance and complexity of primary care. The report recognises the need for general practice services if we are to achieve a sustainable NHS. The RCGP has drawn on the findings of the report when developing our own vision for general practice ‘2022GP’."