In a report, entitled It Shouldn't Be This Hard: Solving the NHS maze for patients and GPs, the organisations put forward three shared priorities based on patient and GP feedback:  

• Every patient should be able to navigate their care: patients and GPs must be equal partners in co-designing care pathways so they reflect real experiences and needs.  The NHS must provide clear and consistent information about how to access services and what to expect so patients feel informed and empowered in decisions about their healthcare. 
• Every patient should be able to see their GP when they need to: governments across the UK must set out clear plans to boost workforce numbers and provide sufficient funding for GP recruitment and retention so patients can access care when they need it - and to improve continuity of care. 
• Every patient should be able to access information about their care: patients and GPs must be equal partners in designing simpler, user-friendly systems to allow patients to see key information about their care, including being able to easily track specialist referrals.

The report concludes that there are not enough GPs to provide the safe and timely care patients need, echoing concerns of 57% of RCGP members who said they do not have enough time during appointments to build the relationships that are often key to delivering holistic care. 

The report calls on all four UK governments to boost the GP workforce with clear plans to train, recruit and retain thousands more GPs, addressing both the workforce numbers and the funding needed to ensure enough appropriate roles are available. 

Professor Victoria Tzortziou Brown, chair of the Royal College of GPs, said: ‘General practice is the front door to the NHS but it's clear that too many patients feel that opening that door leads them into a maze.  

‘GPs share this frustration; we see first-hand how bureaucratic and overwhelming it can be and spend considerable amounts of time trying to navigate this maze too – by chasing letters or following up on referrals, for instance. These are valuable hours that could be spent with our patients.  

‘The uncertainty of not knowing where they are in the system has come out as a particular concern. We find that when people know how long they're going to have to wait for care, it's much easier to deal with than when they are left in the dark. That's why we want patients to be able to access this information themselves, without having to rely on GP teams to chase it on their behalf.' 

She added: ‘The government has committed to ‘thousands' more GP but we now need to see a detailed, fully-funded plan to recruit, employ and retain the GP workforce patients need.'