Nearly five million patients each month in England wait more than a fortnight for a GP appointment, NHS figures show, which Labour is calling “unacceptable”.
The Royal College of GPs says 85% of appointments happen within two weeks and nearly half on the same day.
Those taking longer than two weeks may be routine ones for which the wait is therefore appropriate, it says.
Prof Kamila Hawthorne, who chairs the Royal College of GPs, said: “GPs and our teams are working tirelessly to deliver safe, timely and appropriate care and to give patients the choice of appointment they want.
“We share our patients’ frustration when they struggle to access our care. However, this is not down to GPs and their hard-working teams, but due to decades of underfunding and poor resource planning.”
GPs were delivering more appointments overall than before the pandemic but with fewer full-time fully qualified staff.
‘Broken promises’
There are about 30 million GP appointments each month in England.
Labour shadow health and social care secretary Wes Streeting is due to give a speech on primary health care on Friday, repeating a party promise to train 7,500 more doctors and 10,000 more nurses a year.
Ahead of the speech, Mr Streeting said: “Patients are finding it impossible to get a GP appointment when they need one, after 13 years of Conservative broken promises and understaffing of the NHS.
“These unacceptable waiting times mean illness will go undiagnosed for longer, while patients are left in pain and discomfort for weeks or even months.
“Labour will fix the front-door to the NHS, starting by doubling medical-school places so we train 7,500 extra doctors and 10,000 more nurses a year.”
‘Unfunded scheme’
The Conservative government says it is expanding the primary-care workforce.
A party spokesman defended its record on doctor recruitment, saying: “If Labour were serious about cutting waiting lists, they would have backed our plan to get more doctors into the NHS. Instead, they voted to send doctors into early retirement.
“Labour’s latest unfunded scheme to restructure the NHS has been slammed by doctors as ‘dangerous’ and costing ‘a fortune’.
“Meanwhile, in the past 12 months in England, we have recruited over 5,100 more doctors – making it easier to see a GP and helping to cut waiting lists.”
The Liberal Democrats, meanwhile, say they would recruit an extra 8,000 GPs to “guarantee people a right to an appointment within one week, so people can get the care they deserve”.
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