26.09.14
Long GP waiting times are a ‘national disgrace’ – RCGP
Long waiting times to see a GP have become a national disgrace that could endanger health, the chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners has warned.
Dr Maureen Baker spoke out as NHS figures showed that one in six patients have to wait at least a week before they see a GP or practice nurse.
A total of 58.9 million patients in England are set to have waited for a consultation for a week or more by the end of 2014, up almost 50% from the 40 million who waited that long during 2012, according to a new RCGP analysis of data from NHS England’s six-monthly GP patient survey.
“Every patient should be able to get an appointment with their GP or practice nurse when they want and need one, and GPs are working harder than ever to try and meet the demand,” Dr Baker said. “But these devastating statistics show that waiting times are now a national disgrace and that the situation is set to get even worse over the year ahead.
“Even more worrying is that we have no way of finding out how many patients decide not to seek treatment because they cannot get an appointment, which means we might be missing opportunities of detecting illnesses at an early stage or preventing them happening in the first place.
“Our patients are bearing the brunt. We simply don’t have enough GPs to meet patient demand and those that we do have are over-worked and overstretched.”
According to a new ComRes poll commissioned by the College, two-thirds of those polled (65%) worry that GP workloads, with some GPs seeing 40-60 patients a day, are a threat to the standard of care family doctors provide. Only 23% of those surveyed think that there are enough GPs to cope with the ageing and growing population.
The RCGP estimates that England needs 40,100 full-time equivalent GPs in order to meet increasing patient demand, but there are currently only 32,075. In 2009, there were 32,110 GPs.
The Department of Health said: “The latest GP survey actually shows that the vast majority of patients – 85% – can get an appointment within a few days. But to increase convenience for patients we’re also going further by offering 7.5 million more people email, Skype and evening and weekend slots.”
Dr Mike Bewick, deputy medical director for NHS England, said: “GPs are working hard, but patients should be able to get appointments. We want to give frontline GPs in clinical commissioning groups the power to invest more in primary care, while also modernising the way GPs work, with greater use of telephone, email and video consultations, as well as more flexible appointment times, including opening in the evenings and at weekends.”
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