Figures show North East falling behind on 7 day GP service

If you struggle to get an appointment with your GP - then you might not be surprised to hear that many doctors surgeries in the North East aren't offering a 7 day service.

New figure show access varies massively across the region - in Sunderland, 97% of patients have got access to that full 7 day service - in Northumberland, just 4% have.

NHS England have until October 1st to make sure all doctors surgeries are open from 8 til 8, seven days a week, all year round.

NHS North Tyneside CCG, where Dr George Rae practices, has reported 62% of patients registered have full provision to extended access. The service is provided by three hubs, which are operated by groups of GP practices, offering urgent and planned appointments on evenings and weekends.

Dr George Rae said:

"Patients deserve the best possible access to their general practitioner. It is incongruous that, at a time when far too many patients are sometimes waiting weeks to get an appointment during the week to see their GP, the government is focusing so much on extended access at weekends and in the evening.

“Sufficient resources and funding must be made available to core basic general practice. It is struggling to meeting patient demand with the existing complement of staff and doctors during the normal working week. This is what patients deserve but unfortunately, this is just not happening.

“Far too much of the supposed funding in the heralded General Practice Forward View is actually not getting through to practices to stabilise core general practice in the face of soaring demand and the critical shortage of GPs. This core funding must be delivered to bring about a manageable, safe workload for general practice and this would be to the benefit of patients.

“Government must really start to realise, before it is too late, that GPs are very innovative. There are many examples of services which could be built around an adequately funded core contract e.g. providing extended access. We have done this in North Tyneside with the formation of four hubs where patients are seen out of normal hours.

“There are too many pots of money not being used in a way they should be. GPs are struggling with core general practice, why don’t we concentrate on that?

“This is the biggest crisis in General Practice. We are dealing with issues of manpower, capacity and safety at work. We need to resource core general practice. Extended access is a good idea but first things first."

An NHS England spokesperson said:

“The NHS is investing at least £258m this year to offer improved access to general practice, including evening and weekend appointments. This is ahead of schedule with appointments available to more than half the country now, and they will be available across the whole country by October this year.

“The 55% figure quoted in the planning guidance is based on data collected through the GP Forward View monitoring survey, which is completed by CCGs. This reflects the provision of extended access, including evening and weekend appointments, available to the local population over and above GP appointments available during normal working hours.

“The 40% figure (seen in the open data analysed by the BBC Shared Data Unit) comes from the latest results of the extended access bi-annual survey, which collects information on extended access from individual GP practices, not all of which will provide evening and weekend appointments, as these may be provided through access hubs."

A Department of Health spokesperson said:

“We want everyone to have access to GP services, including routine appointments at evenings and weekends - and already millions of patients have benefitted from this which is backed by our investment of an extra £2.4 billion a year into general practice by 2021."