Stephen Pollard
GP. That’s why so much time, effort and, yes, money is being spent on introducing evening and weekend appointments – giving patients the chance to see a GP at a time that is actually convenient.
Until now, these have been only pilot schemes. This week, however, the Government has made clear that, by March, everyone will have the chance to see a GP in the evening or at the weekend.
A lot of nonsense has been written in response to this, arguing that it’s all a waste of money. According to figures from the pilot schemes, more than £15million has been “wasted” through a total of 501,396 of these newly extended GP hours not being used.
The plan is nonetheless to push ahead with spending more than £500million on the scheme to have full 8am-8pm GP surgery opening times, seven days a week, by 2020/21 – even though 37 per cent of Sunday appointments are so far being left unused, 23 per cent of Saturday appointments and 23 per cent of evening appointments. But this misses the point completely. For one thing, very few of us realise that these pilot schemes exist.
And as NHS England pointed out in response to the figures, in a survey for Pulse magazine, six out of 10 CCGs did not respond to the survey, and “the more representative results of the annual GP survey and the patient response to new digitalfirst GP providers is clear – patients want quicker access to a trusted GP, both during the working week and outside traditional surgery hours. And patients are prepared to vote with their feet to get it.”
Take one of the pilot schemes, the brilliant GP At Hand app. I registered with it a few months ago and it is wonderful. If I need to see a GP, I go to the app and an appointment is usually available within the hour. Then I have a video consultation with a GP – and I can do it while I’m at work.
If the NHS is to survive in anything like its present form, it simply has to adapt. But this works both ways. Because one of the worst problems the NHS has to deal with is people who do have an appointment but simply don’t turn up for it.
Oddly, there are no central statistics for this, but in 2015 NHS England estimated that more than 12 million GP appointments are missed every year.
SINCE every 10-minute GP slot costs the NHS about £25, that means in the region of £300million is wasted every year. This is NHS – and therefore taxpayers’ – money down the drain.
It can’t carry on. The NHS needs to adapt to our needs, yes. But it’s under increasing financial strain to do so. Every penny counts.
In return for making the NHS more responsive to our needs, we need to make patients responsive to the basic need of the NHS for us all to stick to our appointments.
Urging people isn’t working. So we need to start charging people who waste their GP’s time by booking an appointment and not turning up.
Perhaps a £10 charge for a no-show would make people think twice. There’s even a case for charging the full, wasted £25 cost.
Whatever the sum, it’s time to make sure all patients realise that if they want to keep an NHS free at the point of use, they have to stop abusing the idea.
‘We should keep our GP appointments’