Millions shut out of doctors’ surgeries

One in nine people trying to see a GP cannot get an appointment, with doctors turning away their patients more than 40 million times this year. Doctors’ leaders said that the figures were a “shocking indictment” of a failing system and warned that the early signs of cancer and other deadly diseases could be missed when patients were shut out of surgeries. Patients have to queue out of the door at emergency sessions, go to A&E or simply give up and hope that they get better, experts said. Receptionists and callers are trying to judge who is in need of emergency treatment, with the rest told to phone back at another time. Patients in London and Birmingham face the most frustration , with one in seven being turned away. The Royal College of GPs said that the system had been “brought to its knees” by the weight of patient demand and warned that it was only going to get harder to see a doctor. Maureen Baker, chairwoman of the RCGP, said: “No GP wants to turn away a single patient — but surgeries are being faced with no choice because they don’t have the resources to cope with the increasing number of older people who need complex care, whilst also meeting the needs of families and people of working age. The profession has been brought to its knees both by a chronic slump in investment and the fact that there are now simply not enough family doctors to go around.” GP numbers are close to record levels but they are dealing with a rising population of older and sicker patients. Ministers have conceded that there are not enough GPs to co-ordinate care for the frail, or to bring more care out of hospitals, where one in four patients in A&E say that they could not get an appointment with a family doctor. The RCGP analysed data from the NHS GP patient survey of a million people, which found that 11 per cent of patients said that they could not get an appointment the last time they wanted to see a GP or nurse. The royal college estimates that this translates to 46 million “non-consultations” this year, up from 34 million in 2012, when 9 per cent could not get an appointment.
They calculate that 372 million appointments will be made this year, up from 300 million the last time it was officially counted in 2008. In Birmingham and London, almost 14 per cent of people calling surgeries will be turned away this year.
Twelve per cent of patients in Merseyside, Manchester and West Yorkshire also face failing to get an appointment. The analysis predicts that patients will be turned away 51 million times next year, rising to 58 million in 2016, meaning that 13 per cent of calls will end with receptionists saying that there is nothing to offer.
“The fact that patients in England will be unable to see their GP when they want to on more than 50 million occasions in 2015 is a truly shocking indictment of the crisis that is enveloping general practice,” Dr Baker said.
“Whilst some of these patients will try calling the practice another time — this isn’t good enough.”
Richard Vautrey, deputy chairman of the British Medical Association’s GP committee, said that GPs would do their best to see patients in an emergency by using telephone consultations or walk-in clinics. “When patients walk in with an urgent problem they want to speak about other problems too because they’ve been waiting a long time,” he said. “It doesn’t bode well for a good consultation when the first minute is spent apologising for the fact that patients have had a delay.”
There are 36,000 GPs in England, a thousand more than four years ago, but Dr Baker said that they dealt with 90 per cent of patient appointments in the NHS on 8.5 per cent of its budget. She wants this raised to 11 per cent to hire 8,000 more GPs, at the expense of hospital specialists.
The government wants half of newly qualified doctors to become GPs to provide an extra 2,000 by 2018. A spokesman for the Department of Health said: “We know GPs are working under pressure, which is why we have cut GPs’ targets to free up time with patients and are increasing The government wants half of newly qualified doctors to become GPs to provide an extra 2,000 by 2018. A spokesman for the Department of Health said: “We know GPs are working under pressure, which is why we have cut GPs’ targets to free up time with patients and are increasing trainees, so that GP numbers continue to grow faster than the population.”