Elderly forced to travel further for GP after 1.3m patients displaced by surgery closures

MORE than a million patients have been forced to find a new GP amid a seven-fold rise in practice closures, an investigation has found.

Family doctors said elderly patients were being left to travel long distances, warning of a “time bomb” as shortages of GPS spread across the country.

Freedom of Information disclosures reveal 445 practices have been shut in the past five years, including some which merged into “super surgeries”. It includes 134 closures last year – a sevenfold rise compared with the 18 practices which closed in 2013. The investigation by Pulse magazine estimated that 1.3million patients have been “displaced”.

In 2015 Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, announced plans to increase the workforce by 5,000 by 2020, but since then numbers have fallen by more than 1,000. Joyce Robins, from Patient Concern, said: “The situation is terrifying for old people. Patients are desperate and they just don’t know where to turn.”

She said many patients struggled to see a doctor, with others facing long waits for an appointment. It follows a rise in the number of GPS taking early retirement, after a clampdown on multi-million-pound pension pots. Dr Richard Vautrey, BMA GP committee chairman, said: “We are really concerned about this, the loss of services in the local community is particularly difficult for the elderly.”

NHS England said: “More than 3,000 GP practices have received extra support thanks to a £27 million investment over the past two years and there are plans to help hundreds more this year.

“NHS England is beginning to reverse historic underinvestment with an extra £2.4billion going into general practice each year by 2021, a 14 per cent rise in real-terms.”