GP Practices are "in crisis" according to the Oakham Medical Practice.

The practice, based on Cold Overton Road, has posted a letter constructed by Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland Local Medical Committee (LLR LMC) which details how GP Practices have been operating over the past year, during the pandemic.

The move follows Healthwatch Rutland conducting a survey on how access to GP services have been affected by the pandemic, as previously reported by Nub News.

Healthwatch Rutland has also received complaints over delays patients are facing in trying to obtain GP services, including long waits on the telephone, as also previously reported.

In the open letter, the medical committee says "General Practice is in crisis".

The letter explained:"Prior to the pandemic general practice had significantly declined due to decades of underinvestment by consecutive governments. This meant that when the pandemic started there was less resilience than there should have been."

The pandemic fostered new working practices, whilst creating "a significant increase in workload."

"In Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland the number of GP appointments since before the pandemic had increased by 54 thousand (10%) appointments per month."

"This is at a time when there has been an ongoing significant decrease in the number of GPs and practices. The number of GP partners in England has fallen by 22 %.

"The number of practices also continues to fall. 98 practices closed last year, meaning 263thousand patients had to find a new practice. In the past 8 years 778 (10%) practices have closed, with 2.5million patients having to find a new practice.

"This has been mainly due to financial instability and inability to recruit new GPs to replace those retiring."

The letter further explained: "On top of trying to cope with this increase in demand and reduction in resources, general practice has been the core of the highly successful Covid Vaccination Programme, delivering the majority of doses.

"During the pandemic general practices have been falsely accused of not pulling their weight, and being 'closed for business.' As you can see the truth is far from this. But constant negative comments have resulted in more patients complaining about their practices and our colleagues and staff being demoralised.

"When hospitals had to close whole departments, general practices were left to support those patients with complex chronic conditions. The huge backlog means that general practice will remain busy for the foreseeable future."

The letter also accuses central government of forcing through changes like a shift to more digital services and booking, which the committee is unhappy with and comes at the expense of the older less tech-savvy.

"This means that practices will have less and less time to provide services to those patients who do not have access to, or cannot use, IT but are more likely to be suffering from significant illness. The outcome will be an increase in health inequality."

The letter also said: "The ever-increasing workload, false negative comments, and underinvestment is having a significant effect on our colleagues with 20% more GPs presenting to mental health services during the pandemic compared with the year before.

"The BMA report that over a third of GPs are considering early retirement in the next 12 months and 22% are planning to leave the NHS."

The committee then requested patients to 'be kind', be more self sufficient in healthcare, and be more 'thoughtful' as complaints takes away time and resource that could be spent dealing with patients. They also needed to be more aware of Covid-10 and cancer symptoms, and to accept the pandemic had created a backlog so customers need to be patient to accept GP services.

The letter added: "We send our sincere sympathies to everyone who has been affected by the pandemic. GPs and our staff have also been affected. Too many of our colleagues, family members, friends and patients who we have known for many years, have died or otherwise suffered.

"We hope that this letter has helped to explain the pressures that general practice is under, why we cannot provide the level of service that you would like to receive and practices would like to provide. Please consider how you can help to protect services and ensure they are targeted towards patients with the greatest need."