New Prime Minister Liz Truss has said ensuring people have access to GP appointments is one of her ‘three early priorities’ in the role.
In her first speech to the public as Prime Minister today, Ms Truss named her other two priorities as growing the economy and dealing with the energy crisis.
She said: ‘Thirdly, I will make sure that people can get doctors’ appointments and the NHS services they need.
‘We will put our health service on a firm footing.
‘By delivering on the economy, on energy and on the NHS, we will put our nation on the path to long term success.’
Ms Truss was formally appointed as Britain’s next Prime Minister today, after defeating her rival Rishi Sunak in the hotly contested Conservative leadership election yesterday.
Taking 57.4% of the vote from eligible Conservative party members, Ms Truss will inherit an NHS facing monumental challenges.
On Sunday, Liz Truss said on Laura Kuenssberg’s new show that one of her ‘key priorities’ would be ‘primary care and GP appointments’.
She said: ‘That is absolutely critical, and it’s very difficult at the moment.’
She also said she would ask her health secretary to ‘set out a clear plan’ for reducing waiting times for operations, adding that she is ‘completely committed to the budget we’ve set out for the NHS’.
During her election campaign, Ms Truss pledged to relax GP pension tax charges in a bid to stem the exodus of doctors from the NHS.
The Prime Minister is expected to unveil her plans for relieving the public burden of energy costs on Thursday this week.
This comes as The Sun reported last month that GPs could be tasked with prescribing money off energy bills for their most vulnerable patients, under proposals put forward by the Treasury to the next Prime Minister to tackle the cost-of-living crisis.
Following yesterday’s Tory leadership election results, BMA council chair Professor Philip Banfield said in a letter to Ms Truss that GPs and their teams are ‘bearing the brunt of excessive waiting times while many are themselves overwhelmed with demand’.
He wrote: ‘Urgent attention must be given to relieving this pressure and providing the required support to primary care.’
READERS' COMMENTS [11]
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Maybe she’s going to shake the magic GP tree?
This sounds ominous. I wonder how big the GP bashing stick will be?
Inert generic blah.
Nicely skipped the social care rabbit hole. How naive.
And is banking on the sertraline and cocaine overdosed “talent” of the UK to carry her wow plan forward.
You know she is either going to do something stupid or wind the only scapegoat left even more.
Don’t worry.
Same day GP appointments – mean same day hospital referrals.
Two can play a cunning game.
‘Fourthly, I will make sure that people can get dentists’ appointments’ – nope
‘Fifthly, I will ensure I cover up that I have any clue of what really goes on, in the gutter of the high street’
‘Sixthly, Boris and my mates are going to drain this country clean – but let’s blame other countries for the missiles that we make – we love war and that must continue’.
Yawn
I think it is wonderful news that the new PM is immediately doubling NHS funding, tripling GMS funds and cutting attached strings, and sponsoring overseas GP VT Trainees and medical graduates to come and work here.
I just wonder how long till she understands what she just committed to, and reneges on it?
Just remember, they need us soo much more than we need them! Patients already have access, it’s the next step that is the problem,the one that they have spectacularly failed to address- Capacity! Unfortunately, we are just the mugs that end up in the firing line when reality is spelt out. Will be an interesting next step, end game approaches!!
Not a good sign that she has singled out GP access as one of her top priorities.
Carrot or stick…? Oooh I can’t wait to find out!
You want to improve GP access well here are some quick fixes. Suspend CQC inspections, they take up at least the time of 3-4 GP s for a working day. Time that could be spent dealing with patients.
Suspend appraisals, they use up half a day for 2 doctors or about 30,000 working days in a year.
Those 2 things alone could free up the equivalent of enough time for another 1 million plus patient appointments in a year.
Sort out the pensions so senior and experienced doctors do not have to cut back or stop NHS work because of punitive pension taxation. They could fix it for the judiciary.
Stop this obsession with evening and weekend opening. There are no more doctors. If people are forced to work evenings or weekends they will take time off in the week instead, or give up on being a GP. The end result will be no increase in available appointments for patients.
Simple solutions and easy to implement but any bets on nothing happening.
How about the Daily papers campaigning for some of these.
In other news, well that’s the whole point, let’s talk about the “other” distracting pointless news not actually what matters.
Need to take a step back from victim mode – it has been a spectacular failure for the profession for over a decade now.
“They” don’t do anything “nasty” to you. No one is going to “rescue” you.
You decide whether or not to accept behaviour that directly impacts upon you.
You don’t even need to retire (or resign if too young to retire).
?En masse GPs reduce sessions by 10%. There is no one out there waiting to take your job from you. Allow waiting times to increase further. Divert patients to A&E – unsustainable effect on 2ary care leads to action.
If you want to effect change, you should not gripe and moan about things, and then carry on anyway.
However, the profession left it too late to restore real world income – even if the country printed money / increased national debt to fund an improved reward for GPs all that would happen is further spiral of inflation / tax increases that would take away any gains.
I would suggest work life balance through demand management – sadly the opposite direction of travel of the new PM.
Good luck.
The issue is capacity. Yes access has worsened, but that’s because we have fewer people spreading themselves more and more thinly. Sort capacity and access would largely take care of itself. The issue is 350 people trying to get into 15 slots, not that the slots aren’t at midnight on a Sunday, but by making it seem like no one can ever get an appointment it seems like an us problem instead of an ‘oh shit we pissed everyone off so much they’ve decided they’d rather do literally anything else’ them problem.
It’s rather clever. Agree with John Evans, we have to take our power back, no one is going to hand it to use while we are a convenient scapegoat (which we always are!)