BORIS: GPs MUST SEE US FACE TO FACE
As Mail campaign gathers momentum, a powerful intervention from Downing St...
Boris Johnson last night piled pressure on GPs to offer more in-person consultations.
His spokesman said every patient had the right to a face-to-face appointment if they wanted one.
A day after the Mail launched a campaign to improve access to family doctors, Downing Street said: ‘The public rightly may choose to want to see their GP face to face – and GP practices should be making that facility available to their patients.’
Charities and politicians have been clamouring for the Prime Minister to act amid fears that cancers and other serious health conditions are being missed in remote consultations. Just 57 per cent of GP appointments are now in person compared with 80 per cent before the pandemic.
‘The relationship between the GP and his or her patient really depends on face-to-face consultation,’ said Tory former health secretary Kenneth Clarke.
‘I find it difficult to see how anyone can diagnose totally accurately symptoms described over
the telephone. I think face-to-face appointments should go back to pre-pandemic levels and I don’t see why they can’t.’
As the Mail’s campaign to restore in-person appointments to normal levels gathered momentum:
■ A study found patients given telephone appointments were more likely to end up in A&E;
■ In one in five areas, face-to-face appointment rates are even lower than in January;
■ Private providers reported a rise in numbers paying for face-to-face access;
■ More stories emerged of patients developing serious conditions after struggling to see a GP;
■ The BMA, the trade union for doctors, issued a robust statement insisting GPs were seeing millions of patients face to face every week.
Doctors say telephone and video appointments allow them to get through more patients. But critics believe the pendulum has swung too far and that doctors are more likely to miss the signs of a more serious illness if they don’t see someone in the flesh.
Pressed on the issue yesterday, the Prime Minister’s spokesman said: ‘The NHS has been clear to every GP prac
‘Struggled with telephone triage’
tice that they must provide face-toface appointments, and we fully support that.
‘GPs throughout the pandemic have worked hard to see patients and appointment numbers have returned to pre-pandemic levels. It’s right that the public expect to be able to see their GP in person, if needed.’
Although the comments from Downing Street are a positive step, there has been no commitment to take action.
There have been calls to change the way GP practices are funded to incentivise doctors to see patients face to face. The pressure group Silver Voices is campaigning for a statutory duty to be placed on them to hold in-person surgeries if patients want them.
Caroline Abrahams of the charity Age UK said older people were struggling with telephone triage.
She added: ‘We urge NHS England to challenge and support GP practices that have moved too far, too fast, in their use of technology.’
The BMA said: ‘The move to an initial telephone consultation to assess a patient’s needs was, and is, in line with NHS England’s and the Government’s guidance. Many patients have really appreciated the benefit of alternative types of consultations, which can then be followed by a face-to-face appointment if needs be.’
NICOLE Freeman, whose distressing tale we recount on page 17, says she is lucky to be alive after surviving mouth cancer.
But as well as gratitude, the new mother – who had half her tongue removed – feels another emotion: Profound anger.
Refused a face-to-face appointment with a GP five times because of the pandemic, her life-threatening tumour was misdiagnosed from a photograph as a benign ulcer.
As she tells this paper: ‘My cancer would have been caught much quicker if I could have seen a doctor.’
While Mrs Freeman had a narrow escape, many others are tragically not so fortunate. A string of deaths has amplified fears that potentially fatal illnesses are being missed because of the rise of virtual consultations.
A troubling study lays bare the dangers. Patients who have a phone appointment with their family doctor are significantly more likely to end up in A&E than those seen in person.
Of course, at the height of Covid remote check-ups were inescapable. Surgeries were ordered to close to stop the disease spreading. But despite the hugely successful vaccine rollout freeing us from lockdown, the number of face-to-face consultations has dropped in a shocking one in five areas of England.
That is why the Mail, along with our amazing readers, is proud to fight for patients whose voices are being ignored.
The key demand of our new campaign – Let’s See GPs Face To Face – is a guarantee that anyone wanting to see their family doctor in person can do so.
Crucially, it has already won trenchant support from the Prime Minister, who urges practices to stop shunning patients.
While digital appointments have their place, the pendulum has swung too far. With more complicated ailments, talking to someone via Zoom is simply no substitute for examining them in the flesh.
True, responsibility for this unedifying situation does not lie entirely at GPs’ doors. The Government is not training sufficient numbers to meet the demand of our rising and ageing population.
Covid curbs restrict patients in waiting rooms. And Labour’s lamentable contracts let many abandon out-of-hours work.
But patients are furious that some GPs are so reluctant to resume normal service. For the Corbynite British Medical Association to claim criticism of these refuseniks is ‘fuelling a spiralling climate of abuse’ against them is sensationalist twaddle.
Nurses, hospital medics and countless others have tirelessly dealt with people face to face throughout the pandemic. So why won’t doctors reopen their surgeries?
Healthcare is supposed to be free at the point of need. But when selfish GPs freely put their own convenience before the needs of their patients, what is their point?