Streeting vows to slash red tape in general practice

The government is launching a “red tape challenge” to cut down on bureaucracy and free up GPs’ time, Wes Streeting has said. In a speech at the annual conference of the Royal College of General Practitioners in Liverpool on Friday 4 October, the health and social care secretary said that GPs were spending far too much time filling in forms.

“When I’ve spent time shadowing GPs, one of the things they’ve been dying to show me is the sheer amount of paperwork [they] are required to fill in to refer a patient,” Streeting said. “I was genuinely stunned to hear about one practice that has to complete more than 150 different forms to refer patients into secondary care services.

“Practices spend as much as 20% of their time on admin and work created by poor communications with secondary …