The face of General Practice is changing and considerable challenges lie ahead as practices struggle to keep pace with the steadily increasing scale and nature of the work involved.
As in most walks of life, adapting and adjusting to significant change requires access to readily available, new sources of working capital.
At Professions Loans, our aim is to make just such loans for doctors available to your practice – at flexible and competitive rates.
But first, the facts….
In a briefing paper published in April 2017, the British Medical Association (BMA) reported that there are currently a little over 9,300 GP practices in the British Isles, employing around 51,000 GPs.
This is the workforce serving to tackle a rapidly changing population profile:
- the number of people aged 65 and older is increasing significantly – the figure currently stands at more than 11 million – and 1.5 million are over the age of 85;
- in the past decade, the number of people reaching the age of 100 has increased by more than 72%;
- by 2040, it is estimated that a quarter of the entire population – one in four people – will be aged over 65;
- as the population profile changes, so the number of people living with chronic medical conditions increases – an estimated 1 million living with dementia by the year 2021 and 3 million living with or having survived cancer by 2035, when there is also expected to be an extra 550,000 cases of diabetes and 400,000 more cases of heart disease;
- it is not just the size of the elderly population that is likely to increase demand for GPs services, but the fact that older people typically require considerably greater time, effort and care from their GPs – and the provision of such increased care of course costs more in terms of the resources you provide;
- the BMA forecasts a 60% increase in the next 20 years of the number of older patients with care needs 60% over the next 20 years;
- in addition to the burden of elderly care, the BMA cites evidence of the needs of the medical needs of the population at large also becoming more complex and time consuming – the number of diabetics, for instance, has seen more than a twofold increase from 1.4 million in 1996 to 3.5 million today, whilst obesity rates by 2050 are expected to affect 60% of adult men, a half of all adult women and a quarter of all children.
Consequences
As a result of the changes which have already taken place, the BMA estimates a 15% increase in the number of GP appointments made during the period 2011 to 2014 – with some 340 million consultations taking place each year.
Britons currently see their GP on average six times a year – and this is double what it was just ten years ago.
The financial repercussions
The increasing demands on GP surgeries in turn calls for development to meet increased volumes of appointments and overall growth in the services you offer.
That, of course, also demands investment, access to working capital and improved cashflows in surgery budgets that are already likely to be running at full stretch. These are the additional funds that might be needed to meet the tax liabilities of your practice, VAT, the financing of essential assets, IT and software or many other necessary acquisitions.
To meet these needs, you might want to consider the financial options available from us here at Professions Loans.
We are specialists in arranging unsecured business loans – borrowing which does not have to be secured against your own or the practice assets.
This underscores the essential flexibility of our loans, since you may choose whatever amount your practice needs – from £5,000 to £1 million or more – and elect to repay it over any period between three months and five years.
The funds may be used in any way that helps your practice – from financing the acquisition of further assets for the practice or the commissioning of new IT systems and software to spreading the cost of your tax and VAT bills throughout the year.
Whether it is extra working capital you need to help meet the changing, more onerous demands, of the modern general practice or simply the need to improve your budgetary cashflow, we are able to arrange the loan that suits the needs of your particular practice.
Your application is handled by your personal account manager, who is there not only to help you complete the application process from start to finish, but also to ensure that a decision is reached in as short a time as possible – normally, just a couple of working days.