Thread by @SkyNews

Sky News analysis has found that the number of fully qualified GPs has fallen in four out of five areas in England since March 2016, with the North experiencing some of the biggest drops.

Follow this thread to see what we learned from the data 👇

Everyone seems to have a story about the difficulty of getting an appointment with a GP. We wondered what the data showed and found some worrying signs.

Blackburn with Darwen has just 33 doctors for every 100,000 people. That’s dropped 27% since 2016.

👉 trib.al/uHnGDQ0

In fact we discovered that the ratio of fully qualified GPs has fallen in four out of every five CCG areas in England in the last five years.

👉 trib.al/uHnGDQ0

More deprived areas generally have fewer GPs than wealthier ones - and that gap is widening.

A study by the Health Foundation also concluded that general practice is under the most pressure in England's poorest areas - where it is least equipped to make improvements 👇

While the number of doctors is going down, we found the number of appointments is going up. Between July and August there were 4% more GP sessions than in the same period in 2019.

👉 trib.al/uHnGDQ0

Are we getting more doctors? In February 2020 the govt committed to recruiting 6,000 new GPs and a further 26,000 health professionals across NHS England by 2024.

There are two different ways of measuring the number of doctors. So far, both show a reduction 👇

And how do we compare to other countries?

Not so well.

👉 trib.al/uHnGDQ0

You can read the full analysis here 👇 news.sky.com/story/the-numb…