26/05/2026
A recent RCGP report has put a figure on something we hear about every day.
Published at the end of April, the Royal College of General Practitioners released findings that will come as no surprise to anyone working in primary care, but are striking to see in black and white. Hidden and avoidable workload is costing the equivalent of £410 per GP per day.
That time is going on chasing information from other services, dealing with inappropriate referral queries and navigating poorly integrated IT systems, none of which needs a GP's clinical expertise.
On average, GPs are spending around a quarter of their day on admin, and nearly three-quarters say this is compromising patient safety.
As an organisation working alongside GP practices every day, this reflects much of what we see. The volume of correspondence, the referral admin, the tasks that pull clinicians away from patients.
The report puts numbers to something that has become the background noise of general practice.
The RCGP is calling for better joined-up working between primary and secondary care, investment in digital systems that actually talk to each other and a reduction in duplicative processes. It is hard to disagree.
It is also why we are proud to be partner of the Professional Record Standards Body (PRSB), an organisation advocating for exactly that.
Rachel Woodcock
https://www.rcgp.org.uk/news/gp-workload
