GPs ban advance appointments

by BEEZY MARSH, Daily Mail

Patients are being banned from booking advance appointments with GPs so surgeries can meet a Government 48-hour waiting time target, it has emerged.

Practices are meeting the official pledge by only allowing people to make an appointment on the day they call the surgery.

This ensures that plenty of appointments are always free and GPs' diaries are not cluttered up weeks ahead.

But GPs and patients say the scheme may backfire by actually making it more difficult for some people to get to see a doctor, such as busy professionals.

Other GPs are imposing a ban on receptionists handing out appointments for more than a week in advance.

GP Paul Cundy, whose practice is in Wimbledon, South-West London, said: "It is the Government's flagship policy to promote 48-hour access, but basically it is a load of rubbish.

"In order to make it work, it means that patients who want to book ahead simply can't. It means surgeries are having to adopt a 'pack 'em in' mentality - which is complete madness."

He added: "In the past, most doctors would always see someone on the day if it was very urgent, or within 48 hours if it was less so.

"The things that could wait did wait and some people were more happy with that because it allowed them to plan ahead."

Around a third of GP surgeries are thought to be experimenting with the appointments scheme.

It allows them to say they are on course to meet the Department of Health's '24/48' target which says that 'by 2004, all patients will be able to see a primary care professional within 24 hours and a GP within 48 hours'.

Last year, the Government put more than £80million into helping surgeries meet this aim.

Dr David Roberts, a GP from Cheshunt, Hertfordshire, said doctors at his practice were testing the new scheme by making half their appointments 'book on the day' and half 'book up to a week in advance'.

He said: "We are finding it works very well and we can offer 60 to 70 appointments a day. We also have a minor ailments clinic run by a trained nurse practitioner, dealing with things such as coughs and colds."

He said the scheme had cut down on GPs' time being wasted by patients failing to show up.

But pensioners say it can be almost impossible to make an appointment because of the volume of calls to the surgery.

The daughter of one 81-yearold woman, who did not wish to be named, said: "Even if my mother rings up at 8.30am she cannot get through.

"When she has managed to speak to a receptionist, she has been told all the appointments for the day have gone and to ring back the next day. She had to ring up four days on the trot before she managed to get in. It can't be right."

Tory health spokesman Dr Liam Fox said: "Labour Ministers' pathological obsession with targets now leaves no part of the NHS untouched. Labour can never be part of the solution to the NHS crisis because Labour is the problem."

The Department of Health said patients should be guaranteed 48-hour access to their GP by December 2004.

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