Three-week wait for GP appointment
Posted: February 9, 2016
Posted in: Medical Negligence 
Shadow governor of the North Cumbria University Hospitals Trust, Alan Alexander, has said that people in the area can wait up to three weeks to get a non-urgent appointment with a GP. Health chiefs have announced that due to the shortage of GPs, a bursary of £20,000 is to be offered to GP trainees who come to Cumbria to live and work. Mr Alexander stated at a meeting of the West Cumbria Community Forum health group: “We are going to be seriously depleted in the next 10 to 15 years of medical staff”.
Around one in ten unable to get an appointment at all
Copeland MP Jamie Reed has called on the Government to give more support to patients and GPs following the publication of a national GP/patient survey. It has been highlighted that in the Copeland area access to GPs has not improved and that the area was one in four GPs down. The survey also revealed that there is no spare capacity in general practice in the area. Jamie Reed also stated that more than one in five people were unable to get an appointment or had to wait more than a week. Around one in 10 were unable to get an appointment at all and that around 6 thousand turned to other NHS services as a result.
Programme director of the Success Regime, Nicky O’Connor, confirmed that everything possible was being done to attract doctors to work in the area, including attending a GP recruitment fair in June. Success Regime is a partnership of health organisations working together to try to resolve the recruitment crisis as well as other health service problems.
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