A record number of patients are facing a four-week wait to see their GP – more than 10 million have already endured such waits this year, damning figures show.
Campaigners warn that delays are forcing people to go to overcrowded emergency departments or postpone seeking medical care, leaving many to deteriorate at home.
In the first seven months of this year, there were 10.3 million waits of four weeks or more for a GP appointment in England, according to an analysis of NHS data by the Liberal Democrats.
This is much higher than the same period in 2023, when the figure stood at 8.6 million, suggesting that 2024 is on track to surpass last year’s record of 17.6 million four-week waits for a GP appointment. The figures show that 71 million GP appointments had waits of four weeks or more over the course of the last term.
The Lib Dems used their annual conference in Brighton this weekend to call for £9.4bn of extra funding for the NHS in next month’s Budget and for patients to be given the legal right to see a GP within a week, or 24 hours if urgent.
Campaigners warn that delays are forcing people to turn to overcrowded emergency services. (File photo)
In the first seven months of this year, there were 10.3 million waits of four weeks or more for a GP appointment in England. (File photo)
The government has pledged to tackle the “8am fight” for an appointment. (File photo)
Figures show that 71 million GP appointments had waits of four weeks or more during the last Parliament. (File image)
Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey (pictured) said the NHS should be the “top priority” in the budget
Their analysis shows that in some parts of the country so far this year, almost one in ten appointments have come after a wait of four weeks or more. The highest rate, at 10.1 per cent, is in Gloucestershire – double the national average of 5 per cent. This comes after Lord Ara Darzi’s NHS review published last week found the UK has 16 per cent fewer fully qualified GPs than other high-income countries relative to our population.
The Government has promised to tackle the “scramble at 8am” to get an appointment, with only 49.7 per cent of patients finding it “easy” to contact their practice by phone, compared with 80.8 per cent in 2012, according to the NHS GP Patient Survey.
Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey said the NHS should be the “top priority” in the budget, with an “emergency” injection of money so patients can see a GP when they need to. His party says it would increase the number of GPs by 8,000.
Mr Davey said: “Solving the GP crisis is vital to saving our NHS. If people can be seen more quickly, fewer will end up in hospital. That’s better for them, for the NHS and for taxpayers.”
Dennis Reed, of the over-60s campaign group Silver Voices, said: “We have no confidence that the plans announced so far by the new Government will be sufficient to resolve the crisis engulfing the NHS.”
Professor Kamila Hawthorne, president of the Royal College of GPs, said they shared patients’ frustrations but there were too few doctors to meet demand.
She added: “We want funding for general practice to be included in the budget, but introducing arbitrary targets would make matters worse as they would prioritise rapid access over continuity of care, which we know has benefits for patients and the health service.”
The figures do not make clear whether patients wanted to book an appointment four weeks in advance or had to wait that long. They only measure appointments that had been booked, so if they were denied an appointment because it was too far in the future, it would not be obvious.
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesman said last night: “These results show the extent to which general practice has been neglected. This government will address this problem by shifting the focus of healthcare from hospital to the community.”