Hundreds of thousands of GP sick notes given out in Nottinghamshire in 2022

For the last decade, GPs have been able to provide patients with electronic ‘fit notes’, which tell employers if a patient is too ill to work, or give other recommendations, such as reducing their working hours.

New figures from NHS England show 203,007 fit notes were provided by GPs in the former NHS Nottinghamshire clinical commissioning group area in 2022, an average of 16,917 a month.

This means there were 28,744 fit notes given out for every 100,000 patients aged 18-65 – a higher rate than England as a whole, which had 27,789 per 100,000 patients.

Across England 10.7 million fit notes were issued last year, up from 10.5m the year before, and 10.2m in 2019, the year before the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.

However, there was a 4 per cent decrease in the number of fit notes issued in the last quarter of 2022, compared with the same quarter in 2021.

The Daily Telegraph has reported the Government is looking into ways of reforming the fit note system to limit the impact of long-term sickness on the economy.

John Appleby, director of research at the Nuffield Trust health charity, said: “Aside from the impact on the labour market, tackling recent rises in long-term sickness will represent a challenge to health services as they grapple with the demands of post-pandemic recovery.”

Women were disproportionately likely to be the recipients of fit notes, receiving 57.9 per cent of all fit notes last year.

Mr Appleby said: “While reductions in labour market participation are almost certainly in part associated with the impact and aftermath of the pandemic, for women the rise in long-term sickness as a reason for inactivity pre-dated Covid, starting at the beginning of 2019”

In England, the number of fit notes issued for a period of five weeks or more rose from 4.2m in 2021 to 4.5m last year.

A large majority of fit notes do not give a specific diagnosis, but more than a million fit notes were issued for mental and behavioural disorders in 2022, including 6,150 in Nottinghamshire.