A lack of access to GPs is driving pressure on A&E services, the health secretary said yesterday.
Sajid Javid said that he believed part of the reason people turned up to casualty departments for non-emergency conditions was “because they’re not able to get through to their primary care services in the usual way”.
His comments came as the British Medical Association seeks to ballot its GP members on potential industrial action after pressure to increase the number of face-to-face appointments.
Patients should not be blamed for their actions, Javid told the Commons Health and Social Care Committee, as they “stayed away from the NHS when they were asked to, they now want to be seen and that is right”.
However, Professor Martin Marshall, head of the Royal College of GPs, insisted there was “no hard evidence” to link A&E pressures on GP access, pointing instead at the need for general practice to be “sufficiently resourced”.
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“The government needs to make good on its promise of 6,000 more GPs and 26,000 more members of the practice team — as well as introducing measures to tackle ‘undoable’ workload in general practice,” Marshall said.
Javid admitted that the government was not on track to meet its target of recruiting 6,000 more GPs by 2024.