Mounting pressure on Yorkshire and Northern Lincolnshire GPs

GPs have been forced to reject patients for routine appointments as pressure on practices means they can only accept urgent consultations, as pressure mounts of GPs in Yorkshire and Northern Lincolnshire.

According to a new survey of 769 GPs, nearly 17% said they had to turn down patients attempting to see a GP for a routine matter.

Some GPs have no routine appointments available for the next four weeks and are using telephone triage to identify those who require consultation for an urgent matter.

Dr Andrew Green is a GP in Hedon, he’s been forced to use the telephone triage to assess patients;

“GP’s all over the country are under great pressure at the moment, and in 30 years of general practice I’ve never known it so busy.

“Unfortunately this is meaning some patients are having to wait longer than we would like, for them to come and see us.”

The British Medical Association (BMA)'s GP Committee said the data - collected by Pulse, the publication for GPs - was ‘further evidence of the pressures practices are under'’.

Dr Martin Tant, a GP in Lincolnshire, said: “When we ran out of appointments for the four following weeks, we ceased offering appointments beyond four weeks in the future.

“We noticed a large rise in patients who did not attend their appointment, having booked this far in advance.''

While 127 survey respondents said they had to reject patients attempting to see a GP for a routine matter in the last 12 months, 543 respondents said they had not had to do so while 99 did not know.

Health secretary Jeremy Hunt pledged in September 2015 there would be 5,000 extra GPs in England by 2020.

However the number of full-time equivalent GPs in the workforce has decreased by more than 1,000 since then.

The BMA has called for limits to be agreed for the number of consultations a GP can safely undertake in a day.

BMA GP Committee chairman Dr Richard Vautrey said: “This is further evidence of the pressures practices are under, with growing demands for appointments not being matched with an ability to provide them due to the continuing recruitment and retention crisis in general practice.

“Over recent years, the number of consultations has been steadily rising while the GP workforce has been declining.

“Surgeries are now left in the position where telephone triage is the only method by which staff are able to handle this demand in a safe manner - but this can result in increased stress for many GPs as they try to manage so many patients each day.'