The college has published figures suggesting almost 1 million more people will be living with serious, long-term health conditions by 2025

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

The government is living in “cloud cuckoo land” over seven-day working, the Royal College of GPs has said, as it published figures suggesting almost 1 million more people will be living with long-term conditions by 2025.

The Royal College of GPs (RCGP) predicts an “explosion” of people living with more than one serious long-term, life-threatening condition in the next decade.

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The college said the number would rise from an estimated 8.2 million in 2015 to 9.1 million in 2025. This would cost the NHS up to £1.2bn a year, it said.

When she addresses the RCGP conference in Glasgow, the chair, Dr Maureen Baker, will say the government’s plans for seven-day working is a “recipe for disaster”.

In her address to the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, she will say: “Mr Hunt, you say ‘new deal’, but my message to you and Mr Cameron is this: if you don’t shore up existing GP care as your top priority, not only will you not get a seven-day service, but you won’t have a five-day service either – because you will have completely decimated general practice.”

She will call for an immediate increase in funding to ensure general practice receives 11% of the overall NHS budget, including “an immediate injection” of £750m. General practice in England receives just 8.45% of the NHS budget.

Every stop must be pulled out to increase the number of GPs, including financial incentives to attract medical students to general practice.

Baker will argue that delivering care to patients with chronic conditions is most cost-effective in general practice, yet most NHS money goes to hospitals.

She will talk about growing up in a working-class family in Wishaw in Lanarkshire, Scotland.

Her father, one of 10 children, died in his 50s, and the lives of her uncles and aunts were shortened by heart disease, cancer and respiratory disease. Nowadays their life expectancy would most likely be significantly longer.

“They might be living into their 70s, 80s, and beyond, and would almost certainly be coping with one, two, three or more long-term conditions.

“It is a great testament to modern medicine that nowadays we are much more likely to prevent or treat diseases that in the past killed people so early in their lives.

“GPs have played a pivotal role in this transformation. But this success has brought with it a whole new set of challenges to which the NHS is currently struggling to respond.”

The RCGP said GPs and practice teams made 370 million patient consultations a year, 60m more than just five years ago.