Winchcombe Medical Centre face financial pressures

With no hospital in the town, the medical centre provides care to almost 8,000 patients

A medical centre has told its patients it will be offering less GP appointments due to increased financial pressures.

Winchcombe Medical Centre in Cheltenham have warned that people with "minor conditions" may be redirected to pharmacies to help ease demand.

Under the Pharmacy First initiative, pharmacists in England can now conduct consultations and issue antibiotics.

The aim is to help free up millions of GP appointments.

Longer waits

A new study which analysed NHS data from England's 42 Integrated Care Boards (ICB) from July 2021 to December 2023, revealed that NHS Gloucestershire patients have to wait the longest for a GP appointment in the country.

It revealed that 590,950 appointments took over 22 days to occur- which translates into 12.29% of all appointments.

On 19 February, Winchcombe Medical Centre put out statement to its patients about the increased pressures on its appointments and finances.

"Over the last few years, the funding we get from government has increased by 2.1% each year. This increase does not get near to covering our current costs," they said.

"Everything we buy costs more, our energy costs have spiralled, and our staffing costs have also increased.

"In recent months, four staff have left the practice and we cannot afford to replace them," they added.

Patients have been asked to self-manage minor illnesses at home, visit pharmacists, and to attend health checks when invited, in order to maintain good health.

General practice funding has been slashed by more than £350m since 2019

The new Pharmacy First service, launched 31 January, enables patients to be referred to a community pharmacy for a minor illness or an urgent repeat medicine supply.

Stephen Stone, the manager of Winchcombe Pharmacy, said he is "grateful" pharmacies can now do more to help.

"In my career here in Winchcombe we've seen a lot of changes, generally speaking, a lot of struggling across primary care," he said.

"We do what we can to mitigate that, and we're grateful that we can now do a bit more to help them in terms of Pharmacy First and the services that we can provide."

However, Mr Stone added that referring patients to pharmacies is "ultimately a small change trying to patch over a big problem."

"Many pharmacies are under immense stress. Simple things, such as whether your pharmacy answers the phone, is a sign of stress.

"Things fall to the wayside, it's not safe for patients and it's just a sign of things as they currently stand. It's unsustainable, realistically," he added.

A spokesperson from NHS Gloucestershire said: "We continue to provide support to practices and Primary Care Networks in areas such as telephony and appointment systems, expanding the existing workforce and managing workload.

"At the same time, we will do all we can to back the work of our practice teams as we finalise funding plans for the coming year."