Patients will have to wait weeks for GP appointments even if a Conservative government fulfils a promise of thousands more doctors, analysis suggests.
Waiting times will “rocket” without drastic measures to cut the numbers visiting a doctor, according to senior GPs. Three-week waits will become the norm unless doctors put in more hours of overtime every week, the findings suggest.
A survey of 830 doctors by the GP magazine Pulse suggests that average waits for an appointment are now 13 days, up from ten days two years ago.
Ministers have pledged to recruit 5,000 extra GPs by 2020 to help to control family doctor waiting times, although numbers have continued to dip.
Analysis by Pulse of rising population figures and increasing demand for appointments suggests that even if the doctors are found they will not be enough to keep up with demand.
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The Office for National Statistics predicts that there will be almost three million more people in England by the end of the next parliament and a recent Lancet study found that as the population ages the average person sees a GP more often, now more than three times a year.
If these trends continue without extra doctors, the average GP will need to spend 28.3 hours directly with patients to keep waiting times steady, up from 22.9 now. Even with 5,000 more doctors, GPs would need to work 25.3 hours a week if waits are not to become longer. The figures do not include time on administration or appointment overruns.
Only cutting demand for appointments by a quarter through better use of pharmacists, nurses and cutting red tape would bring waits down, the analysis predicts.
Chaand Nagpaul, chairman of the British Medical Association’s GPs’ committee, said: “Unless the government takes decisive action, waits to see a GP will rocket to several weeks in the coming years as patient demand continues to rise and will seriously compromise patient care. The government needs to urgently stem inappropriate demands on general practice.”
Theresa May has demanded that GP surgeries stop closing during the week and offer more Saturday and Sunday appointments to ease pressure on A&E, but Dr Nagpaul argued that GPs were already working long hours.
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He said: “Practices simply cannot offer enough appointments to patients to meet the growing need. The NHS is at breaking point and we need politicians of all parties to avoid ducking the serious challenges.”
Helen Stokes-Lampard, chairwoman of the Royal College of GPs, said family doctors were handling 60 million more appointments than five years ago and could not do more without risking patient safety through burnout.
“Hard-pressed GPs around the country are already running on empty so these predictions are really concerning,” she said. “We simply cannot do any more without a significant injection of investment in general practice.”
Simon Stevens, head of NHS England, has accepted that GPs have their “backs against the wall” and has promised a £2.4 billion funding boost alongside getting pharmacists and nurses to carry out more routine appointments.
Norman Lamb, the Lib Dem health spokesman, said: “This is a stark reminder of the looming GP crisis we will face under a Conservative government.”