Response to today’s announcement re additional £250m for General Practice and the NHS plan for improving access for patients and supporting general practice.

14th October 2021 - 4:56 PM

Haxby Group agrees that General Practice is “the bedrock of the NHS”. Indeed, we see and treat the vast majority of all NHS patients, yet receive 8.1% of the NHS budget.
 
Compared with pre-pandemic, we’ve seen an increase in patient appointments of more than 13%. Last month across York and Hull our teams answered around 30,000 phone calls and carried out 18,400 face to face and telephone consultations.
 
We are therefore aggrieved and disheartened to read that we are, once again, being targeted as not seeing and caring for our patients.

We know some patients hearing the news today will be concerned about their GP Practice and we would like to thank those who have taken the time to express their support.

All our patients who request an appointment are given an appointment type. Many prefer a telephone appointment as this is quicker. If they need a face to face or urgent appointment the doctor will set this up after looking at their details. Anyone needing a same day urgent appointment will get this.

We make sure they get the most appropriate care from the most appropriate person. This may not always be a doctor, but it is the doctor who decides this.

Yes, we have many more phone calls and online enquiries than we did before the pandemic – around 15% more – but we are managing this as best we can, given the recruitment issues, and it has been improving.

We ask that our patients understand this and work with us. Abusing our staff is just not acceptable – indeed it only serves to reduce the number of staff who work here. We will ask anyone who does this in our surgeries to leave the site.