GP representative criticises plans for seven day surgeries

The chairman of the British Medical Association’s GP committee, Dr Chaand Nagpaul, has said that David Cameron needs to reconsider his “surreal obsession” with opening GP surgeries seven days a week, saying that services are already at breaking point.

During the recent election campaign, the conservatives promised GP access between 8.00 am and 8.00 pm seven days a week in England by 2020, as well as promising that all patients over the age of 75 would receive a same-day appointment.

At the forthcoming annual conference of local medical committees, Dr Nagpaul will argue that while the NHS was persisting with “fewer GPs per head than in Europe, while spending less on health compared to virtually all other comparable nations”, no other country was attempting to put in place a plan of any similarity. He will also say that although there are currently 40 million more appointments made with GPs than there were five years ago, the proportion of NHS funds spent in general practice is falling.

Dr Nagpaul said “The government must halt its surreal obsession for practices to open seven days when there aren’t the GPs to even cope with current demands.

“It would damage quality care by spreading GPs so thinly, and replace continuity of care with impersonal shift work, and will reduce our availability for older, vulnerable patients.”

In a recent survey of 15,000 GPs, it emerged that one in three were planning to retire and one in five were intended to move abroad in the next five years. Many surveyed indicated overwhelming workloads.

Dr Nagpaul went on to say “It is absolutely pointless promising 5,000 extra GPs within this Parliament if we lose 10,000 GPs retiring in the same period.”

A spokesperson from the Department of Health said “This is an overly negative and pessimistic view from the doctors’ union.

“Thousands of GPs across the country are already offering patients GP access seven days a week – by next March, a third of the country will be covered.

“We have made it very clear that we will train 5,000 more GPs and have backed the NHS’s own plan for the future by investing the £8bn it needs to transform care closer to home.”

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Posted by Karen Motley, Paralegal, Clinical Negligence Department, Chadwick Lawrence LLP (karenmotley@chadlaw.co.uk ), Medical negligence lawyers and clinical negligence solicitors in Huddersfield, Leeds, Wakefield and Halifax, West Yorkshire.

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