An end to waiting weeks for a GP appointment

SIR – The Government’s plan for GP practices to cover tens of thousands of patients (report, March 17) is the best news the NHS could have.

Bigger practices will provide quicker access for older patients, at times including evenings and weekends. They will also be able to offer appointments lasting longer than 10 minutes. For those happy to talk to a GP from their smartphone, via a video call, waiting times for appointments will be measured in minutes rather than days.

These are exactly the ideas that will see the NHS improve its quality of care in years to come. Alexander Hitchcock Senior Researcher, Reform London SW1 SIR – This idea is merely the latest in a long line of successive policy changes which have led to the NHS becoming unsustainable.

GP “superhubs” will take longer to deal with patients, partly because of a lack of familiarity with the patient and their history and also because GP surgeries do not all use compatible IT systems, so data sharing will not always be possible. Inadequate data sharing will mean that more conditions will go undiagnosed, leading to more negligence claims and greater costs.

It is hard to imagine a worse strategy for adequate patient care. Peter Crawford Sheffield, South Yorkshire SIR – For the past 15 years the Department of Health has been intent on pursuing a policy of quick access to primary care at the expense of continuity of care.

In most areas where “super surgeries” have developed, the public has experienced a reduction in the availability of GP appointments and difficulty in consulting the same doctor more than once.

This is at a time when an increasing body of evidence exists to show that continuity of care leads to lower hospitalisation rates, better management of chronic disease and lower numbers of expensive but needless investigations. Dr Robert Walker Workington, Cumbria