Opportunities and risks within the expanding role of general practice

General practice has been increasingly required to expand its role to take on more complex care — demands enabled by the fluid boundaries of what constitutes ‘general practice’. To date, this expansion has largely related to the care of older patients with multiple morbidities; however, medical advances also present increasing opportunities to relocate specific treatments to primary care that have previously been the sole domain of hospital specialists. With the pressures of COVID-19 and yet more proposed NHS reorganisation, is it fair, or even feasible, to expect GPs to take on more responsibility, which may also open them to censure or legal liability?