Patients should be treated by teams of administrative staff and case managers instead of expecting to routinely see a GP, a think tank has suggested.

The King's Fund called for new models of working, as it warned that "general practice is in crisis" amid a shortage of 6,000 GPs.

It follows research which shows the average family doctor now works three and a half days a week, with 83 per cent of female GPs and 52 per cent of male GPs working part-time.

A study of trainee family doctors found just one in 20 intended to do the job on a full-time basis, a decade later.

Today a new report by the King's Fund called for new ways of working to ease the growing crisis.

But it suggests patients should not expect to keep seeing the same GP.

Report author Beccy Baird said: "We need to look at different models. It could be a 'microteam' - where patients are assigned to a team, rather than to one GP, so that there is a nurse care manager, an admin worker and a care assistant doing much of the work, and the patient doesn't always have to see a GP."

Easing the amount of work GPs were expected to do in each session might mean they were prepared to take on more of them, she suggested.