The doctor will see you now... for five minutes!
But Potteries patients are actually the least likely in Staffordshire to be leaving the consulting rooms so quickly, as Tommy Lumby explains
ONE in five GP appointments in Staffordshire last five minutes or less – although patients in some areas are the least likely in England to have short appointments.
The Royal College of GPS (RCGP) wants 15-minute sessions to be the standard so patients with complex health needs can get the right care.
But it said doctors are working under ‘intense pressure’ as figures show falling numbers of full-time, fully qualified GPS.
NHS Digital has published figures for the first time on the length of GP appointments recorded across the country. Across the county’s six clinical commissioning groups (CCGS), 254,043 appointments (19.9%) attended in the four months to March this year lasted between one and five minutes.
A further 344,155 (26.9%) were recorded as lasting between six and 10 minutes, while 269,435 (21.1%) were between 11 and 15 minutes.
But the figure stood at just 15.6% for the Stoke-on-trent CCG – the lowest proportion lasting five minutes or less out of more than 100 CCG areas in England.
North Staffordshire (17.6%) and Stafford and Surrounds (17.7%) had the second and third-lowest.
But different practices recorded the length of appointments in slightly different ways, which could affect comparisons between areas.
Across England, 16.7 million appointments recorded between December 2021 and March this year were completed within five minutes – 22.7% of all those with a known length. Meanwhile, 19.6 million (26.6%) lasted between six and 10 minutes, and 14.4 million (19.6%) from 11 to 15 minutes.
Overall, GP practices recorded 29.6 million appointments in March alone, which was 4.2 million more than the previous month and 5.5 million above February 2020 – the last full month before the Covid-19 pandemic. They also delivered more than 415,000 covid vaccinations during the month.
An analysis of separate NHS workforce figures by the British Medical Association shows the NHS has lost nearly 1,600 fully qualified, full-time equivalent GPS since 2015.
RCGP chair Professor Martin Marshall said: “Increasingly, patients are living with complex physical and mental health needs, which is reflected in the figures that show almost 40% of patients being seen for longer than 10 minutes in general practice – and more than half if you exclude those with an unknown length.
“This is not to say every patient will need this time as some simple conditions can be dealt with in less.”
Prof Marshall wants the Government to ‘make good’ on its promise of 6,000 more GPS and 26,000 more wider practice workers by 2024.
A Department of Health and
Social Care spokesperson said: “We are working with the NHS to improve access to GPS, tackle the covid backlog, and grow the general practice workforce.
“There were over 1,600 more doctors working in general practice in December 2021 compared to 2019, a recordbreaking number started training as GPS last year, and we’ve invested £1.5 billion until 2025 to create an extra 50 million appointments per year.
“We also made
£520 million available to improve access and