Half of patients waiting over a week to see a GP
‘Struggling to cope with rising demand’
ALMOST half of patients cannot see a GP within a week, a damning analysis reveals.
The number has doubled in four years as understaffed surgeries are unable to cope with the growing, ageing population.
A further 15 per cent – one in seven – said they waited longer than a fortnight the last time they tried to make an appointment. The research of 15,000 patients also found that one in 20 had been made to wait three weeks or more.
It comes as official figures reveal that GP surgeries are closing at a rate of one a week, and thousands of patients are being told to register with unfamiliar doctors’ practices much further away.
NHS England – which runs the health service – said 107 surgeries permanently closed or merged in the past two years. This is the first time the organisation has published such figures and they are much worse than previous estimates.
The Mail commissioned a survey of 14,798 patients over the age of 50 in the UK, through the older people’s website Saga and conducted by Populus. A total of 42 per cent were not able to see their GP within a week the last time they tried to make an appointment.
This is up from 22 per cent who couldn’t see a family doctor in a week in 2014 and 33 per cent in 2016, when we last commissioned the research.
To get around these difficulties, a growing number of patients are turning to pri- vate GPs. A total of 6 per cent said they had used a private GP at least once in the past year and the majority of those had never been to one two years ago.
GP leaders said they were ‘seriously concerned’ about the impact of the waits on patients. Some patients will deteriorate while they wait to see their doctor. Others will be put off from trying to make an appointment – in case they are a burden – even though they may be seriously ill.
Professor Helen Stokes-Lampard, chairman of the Royal College of GPs, said: ‘We know that waiting times for routine GP appointments are going up, not down, and GPs and our teams are as frustrated about this as our patients.
‘We don’t want to tell patients that they have to wait a week, or two, or in many cases more, to see us – we want to be able to see them as swiftly as possible, so we can ensure they are getting the tests and treatment they need. But with the unprecedented resource and workforce pressures facing general practice at the moment, this is not possible – there are simply not enough appointments to go around.’
Dr Richard Vautrey, chairman of the British Medical Association’s GP committee, said: ‘ Understaffed and underresourced GP practices are struggling to cope with rising demand from a growing population with more complex health needs, meaning patients often find themselves facing unacceptably long waits for appointments.
‘At the same time, too many practices are closing because GPs feel they are no longer able to offer the necessary safety and sustainability to their patients with the funding available.’
Rachel Power, chief executive of the Patients’ Association, said: ‘These figures show the toll on patients of the ongoing crisis in NHS funding and workforce management. Until the Government takes bold and decisive action on both, patients will be left struggling to access the NHS through its traditional front door – general practice.’
The Government has promised to hire an extra 5,000 GPs by 2020, although this is looking increasingly unrealistic.
Ministers are also investing an extra £2.4 billion into surgeries as part of a five-year plan to 2021.
Patients who believe they are seriously ill can request an emergency or same-day appointment. Some surgeries require patients to queue up before opening hours for a limited number of same-day slots.