Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to improve access to GP services.
On 22 September 2022, we announced “Our Plan for Patients,” which we estimate will help general practices deliver over a million more appointments this winter, and we set the expectation that patients who need an appointment within two weeks can get one, with urgent cases being seen on the same day.
This plan committed to publishing practice-level appointment data, to help people make an informed choice about which practice is best for them and set out measures to help patients book appointments more easily and benefit from more options when they need care, for example, from a community pharmacy.
We recognise that some patients have struggled to contact their practice by telephone. To help practices manage demand on their phone systems, NHS England has already offered a short-term telephony solution to all GP practices, which can free up existing telephone lines for incoming calls and help practices match capacity to demand. From December, NHS England will accelerate the delivery of a framework to support all practices to secure cloud-based telephony systems.
We will also free also up funding rules to bolster general practice teams with other professionals who can help them, such as GP assistants and advanced practitioners.