LONDON (Reuters) – Family doctors in England have voted to take industrial action as part of a dispute over funding and contract changes.
The British Medical Association (BMA) on Thursday said General Practitioners (GPs) voted by 98.3% in favour of collective action.
This could see doctors pulling out from patient data sharing agreements or prioritising patients over local health service system demands. The BMA said more than 8,500 GPs took part in the vote, and collective action would begin immediately.
“GPs are at the end of their tether. This is an act of desperation. For too long, we’ve been unable to provide the care we want to. We are witnessing general practice being broken,” Katie Bramall-Stainer, chair of BMA’s GP committee for England, said.”
“The era of the family doctor has been wiped out by recent consecutive governments and our patients are suffering as a result.”
The ballot for action opened in June, ahead of a July 4 election which saw the Conservative Party lose power to the Labour Party after 14 years.
The new government said on Thursday it would give doctors’ surgeries greater freedom over hiring additional staff in order to recruit more than 1,000 newly-qualified GPs this year, a change the profession had been calling for.
Health minister Wes Streeting said an extra 82 million pounds ($105 million) needed to hire those GPs would be paid for by redistributing funds within his department.
“I can understand why GPs wanted to punish the previous government. But taking collective action will only punish patients,” he wrote in an article in the Telegraph newspaper on Thursday, ahead of the ballot result being announced.
(Reporting by Kylie MacLellan; editing by William James)
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