GP waiting times are appalling - MP

Helen Morgan is calling on the government to introduce an emergency package to save GPs

The MP for north Shropshire has said she is "appalled" by GP waiting times in the county, adding the struggle to see a GP has become normalised.

Data from the House of Commons Library, commissioned by the Liberal Democrats, the party represented by Helen Morgan MP, found that 92,236 appointments in the Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin area had been subject to waits of more than 28 days since January, up from 27,482 at the same point five years ago.

Morgan called on the government to introduce an emergency package to save GP services including a dedicated fund to reopen surgeries.

The Department of Health said it was "absurd" to compare NHS numbers at the height of the Covid lockdown to today.

"This government has recruited over 2,000 extra GPs, delivered a record £1 billion boost, cut red tape so doctors can spend more time caring for patients, and enabled patients to request appointments online," it said.

Morgan is also calling for a 24/7 booking system via 111 with the right to a GP appointment within seven days, or 24 hours if urgent, and a recruitment and retention drive to secure thousands of extra family doctors.

"Even though our GPs are working really hard and they're offering more and more appointments, they're not able to keep pace with demand," she told the BBC.

She said GPs faced issues including an increase of patients due to new housing developments, older patients needing to see doctors more often, and barriers to recruitment such as budget and practice size.

Waiting times were a national problem, according to one senior figure

"It's up to the government really to put in place a contract which incentivises people to stay in practice, to retain them and to make sure that the new ones coming through can find work," Morgan said.

"We need to be sure that they have an ambitious plan - they're only talking about an additional 2,000 GPs. We think that number needs to be 8,000, including better retention… over the course of the parliament in order to be able to deliver those within-one-week appointments."

Meanwhile, Julian Povey, chair of the Shropshire and Telford Local Medical Committee - which represents NHS GP Partners - said the whole of the NHS was struggling with waiting times.

"It's a national problem - we've got rising demand, shrinking numbers of GPs, increasing populations, we have to give people an answer quickly about when they're seen," he said.

"I think general practice is churning through the patients... in Shropshire and Telford each month, a quarter of a million people are seen.

"A lot of it goes back to workforce planning which multiple governments in succession have got wrong, so I think we need more GPs, we need more other professions working in general practice, we need to make use of other routes of care."

Deal struck

Earlier this year, the government said patients would be able to book more appointments online and request to see their usual doctor under a new contract agreed with England's GPs.

The deal gives an extra £889m a year to general practices, as well as a reduction in red tape and targets, moves which ministers hope will mean doctors are freed up to see more patients.

From 1 October, every GP practice in England had to offer online appointment bookings throughout the day.

The move is being opposed by the British Medical Association.

A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Care said: "For the first time ever, more patients are contacting their GP practice online than over the phone, and patient satisfaction increased this year after a decade of decline.

"There's a long way to go, but this government has put the NHS back on the road to recovery."