GP appointments must last 15mins, say top doctors

APPOINTMENTS with GPs lasting ten minutes are ‘ unfit for purpose’ and should be extended to at least a quarter of an hour, doctors have demanded.

Extending face-to-face consultations to a standard 15 minutes would allow more time to help patients with increasingly complex needs, said the Royal College of GPs.

Longer and shorter slots should also be available to suit patients but generally they should be at least a quarter of an hour by 2030, according to its report on the future of general practice.

Until April 2014, appointments in England were set at ten minutes. That was dropped but although GPs have more flexibility, it is still the standard length.

Professor Helen Stokes-Lampland chairman of the Royal College, said: ‘It is abundantly clear that the standard ten-minute appointment is unfit for purpose.

‘ It’s increasingly rare for a patient to present with a single condition and we cannot deal with this adequately in ten minutes.

‘GPs want to deliver holistic care but this depends on having more time with patients, and the resources and people to do this.’

Dr Richard Vautrey, GP committee chairman at the British Medical Association, said: ‘This unreasonable time pressure also has a major impact on the mental wellbeing of doctors.’

Cambridge University research in 2017 found that GP slots were on average 9.22 minutes, shorter than most other rich nations. ExHealth Secretary Jeremy Hunt has also admitted they are too short.

But with a major shortage of GPs, doctors already struggle to see patients in the allotted time.

Longer appointments would need thousands more doctors and an influx of funding. An NHS Engard, spokesman said: ‘ The NHS Long Term Plan means an extra £4.5billion in primary and community care, alongside the recruitment of 20,000 physios and other health experts.’ This has seen GPs ‘free up an extra 500,000 hours of time for patients’ in the last year.