GPs admit they can’t meet patient demand

Survey reveals staff shortfalls and surge in cases of abuse

FOUR out of five GP practices say they are failing to keep up with demand from patients.

A British Medical Association (BMA) survey estimated Scotland’s family doctors carried out more than 500,000 appointments in one week.

The figures come from a survey of 375 – or 41 per cent – of general practices across Scotland.

It also found that in 88 per cent of practices, at least one staff member has been subjected to verbal or physical abuse in the past month and 78 per cent said the situation has worsened since May.

The practices surveyed carried out 221,420 consultations between October 4 and 8, with BMA Scotland calculating there were more than half a million appointments in total that week.

Dr Andrew Buist, chairman of the BMA’s Scottish GP Committee, warned: ‘That number of appointments is straining our workforce and GPs and their teams cannot sustain this indefinitely.’

BMA Scotland says all the practices it surveyed carried out some inperson appointments every day.

Since the start of the pandemic, such appointments have fallen from two thirds of cases to about one third, with other patients dealt with by electronic consultation, phone calls and video calls.

Of the practices surveyed, 83 per cent said demand for appointments exceeds supply, with 42 per cent saying demand ‘substantially exceeded capacity’.

More than a quarter had at least one GP position vacant and BMA Scotland estimates that could mean that as many as 225 wholetime positions are unfilled.

Dr Buist added: ‘The vast majority of GP surgeries are saying there is not enough capacity to meet demand. Indeed 42 per cent say capacity is substantially below what is required to meet demand for care.

‘While this is in part, of course, due to increased demand, it is also clearly because we don’t have enough GPs.’

Dr Buist said that in 2017 the Scottish Government had committed to recruit 800 more GPs, adding the survey results make this action ‘all the more urgent’.

He called for ‘renewed focus on retention and recruitment’ and said, with the pandemic ‘still well and truly ongoing’, it is ‘not hard to see why there is huge pressure on GP appointments’.

Dr Buist added: ‘I appreciate difficulty getting an appointment can cause frustration, but it can never be acceptable when this spills over into abuse.’

A Scottish Government spokesman said that 99 per cent of GP training posts had been filled so far this year.

He said: ‘We have a record number of GPs working in Scotland with more per head in Scotland than in the rest of UK. The NHS recovery plan highlights that staff recovery is critical to our ambitions for renewing our NHS and is supported by £8million this year in measures to support the physical, mental and emotional needs of the workforce.

‘The Primary Care Fund is increasing from £195million to £250million in direct support of general practice and will see expansion of multi-disciplinary teams to ease GP workload.’

Scottish Labour health spokesman Jackie Baillie said: ‘It is high time that the SNP listened to the GPs on the frontline and acted, rather than defend a record of inaction.’