Urgent plea for more GPS as patients suffer
ONLY recruiting more GPS will solve the crisis of patients being unable to get face-to-face appointments, as well as avoiding mistakes and misdiagnoses, MPS and campaigners have urged.
Among the most pressing problems patients face include not being able to get through on the phone to book an appointment, weeks of waiting, symptoms not spotted early and the start of treatments being delayed.
Campaigners also complain patients are now being “fobbed off” with less-qualified staff when they meet a practitioner face to face.with primary care suffering from a shortage of doctors, NHS staff are overworked and feel as though they are “holding up a broken system”, MPS said.
On top of the “pent-up demand from people who felt reluctant to seek help during the pandemic”, the pressure is mounting as people now live longer and have more care needs, a debate held on Wednesday heard.
It was held in response to a 19,000-strong petition calling for a legal right for patients to get a timely face-to-face appointment with a GP. Dennis Reed of Silver Voices said of the debate: “There was recognition that remote consultations can lead to misdiagnoses, with devastating life-changing effects.and the Government now appears to be muddying the waters by counting face-to-face appointments with other practice staff as equivalent to GP consultations.”
Theresa Villiers MP called on the Government to use the record £33billion NHS investment to increase the number of family doctors.
She said: “GP services are a crucial gateway to treatment… If this gateway gets blocked up, the consequence will be that lives are lost.”
But she noted that more GP appointments are being made now than pre-pandemic, and that 65 per cent of them are currently face to face.
Maria Caulfield, the Parliamentary Undersecretary of State for Health and Social Care, said there were 4,000 doctors in GP training places this year, an increase from 2,671 back in 2014.
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “We have invested £520million to improve access and expand GP capacity during the pandemic.
“On top of this, we have provided an extra £5.4billion to the NHS to respond to Covid19 over the next six months.”