MIND THE GAP

On the 1st September 2025, the GP ’Mind the Gap’ campaign commenced in Oldham, aligning with similar actions taken both nationally and across Greater Manchester.

This campaign is about and for you, our patients. It aims to enhance patient care and safety by resolving inappropriate transfer of work to primary care, and to identify and help push for gaps in services that are unfunded.

Over the years, General Practice has taken on many non-contracted roles and done excess work for other services for too long. This has led to unmanageable workloads for General Practice and practices across the country and pushing back so we can do what we need to do and are paid to do – looking after you.

In Oldham, we agreed have asked for commissioning gaps to be resolved. These include enabling services like Dermatology and ADHD service providers to be able to request and prescribe their own medications rather than passing to General Practice to do. This not only causes delays to patients but also increases GP workload in actioning and following up the hundreds of requests we get every week.

We have written to the hospitals and ask that they

– Request their own tests (e.g. blood tests and x-rays)

– Action results for their own tests

– Do not ask GPs to repeat tests within 4 weeks as they should be arranged by the hospital

– Do not ask to chase hospital results

– Provide fit (sick) notes for their patients for the necessary duration

– Prescribe medication from hospital including new medications (GPs can continue, if necessary, once started)

– Discharge patients with a minimum of 2 weeks medication

– Do not ask GPs to refer to other specialties / consultants or departments (hospitals can do themselves)

We have also written to community services and ask that they

Maternity

o Do not ask for GP to prescribe instead of their own team or employer

o Do not send test results to GP instead of the hospital or their employer

Podiatry

o Do not send requests for prescriptions

o Do not ask us to chase results of swabs

District Nurses

o Do not send prescription requests

o Request the use of authorisation forms other than for end-of-life medications

Other requests

Shared care – practices are not funded to prescribe and monitor higher risk medications and so have the right to refuse. We are seeking funding but, in the meantime, hospitals or other services providers will remain responsible for prescribing and monitoring.

We appreciate that some of these changes may take time to get right and may be frustrating. We are grateful for all the support our patients have and will continue to give us so we can reduce the amount of work we do unnecessarily and without any funding so that we can do what we are paid to do and improve the care we provide.