26.07.12
Almost 6% of GPs cut extended hours services
Extended GP services have been reduced under the Coalition despite Conservative promises to maintain opening hours in the evenings and weekends, Labour says.
The party conducted research which shows that half of 91 PCTs reported a decrease in extended services, with 5.7% of GPs, or 477 practices, having scrapped the surgeries in the last year.
The worst falls were found inHartlepool, where 31% of surgeries are operating a reduced service.Newcastleand Haringey PCTs reported that a quarter of practices are reducing opening hours.
Labour suggested that this was increasing pressure on A&E departments, with 21.5 million visits in 2011-12 compared with 20.5 million in 2010-11.
Shadow health secretary Andy Burnham said: “There is a cumulative impact here of a range of government policies that is beginning to create markedly inferior service for the public, be it a GP service, be it in an A&E, or be it looking for a walk-in service that doesn't exist anymore. People are then turning up at A&E sicker, and then you get fewer staff in A&E to deal with them.”
In a pre-election promise, Cameron stated that patients would be able to see a GP in their area until 8pm, seven days a week.
Burnham continued: “David Cameron ruthlessly used the NHS before the election to pose as a different kind of Tory and made a series of promises to get intoDowning Street– but day by day his words appear increasingly hollow. The prime minister promised patients would be able to get evening appointments with their GP, but our figures show things are heading in the opposite direction – with almost 500 more surgeries now shutting earlier.”
A Conservative spokesman responded: “It is more than a bit rich for the Labour party to lecture this government on access to GPs out of hours when it was their disastrous GP contract which meant that 90% of surgeries stopped offering this service altogether.
“Our plans to put doctors back in charge of the NHS, which were opposed by Labour, will mean that local doctors will once again be responsible for caring for their patients out of hours and will offer patients a real choice of which GP surgery to go to.”
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