Blair tackled on 48 hour target
Tony Blair has said he was “astonished” to hear claims that the GP targets to see patients within 48 hours are resulting in some surgeries refusing to accept appointments made further in advance.
The Prime Minister promised to investigate the claims when confronted by a member of the public on BBC Question Time last night.
Audience member Diana Church said: “You can’t make the appointment in a week because you are only allowed to make it 48 hours beforehand.”
Mr Blair replied: “That is news to me.” He admitted that this interpretation of targets was “absurd” and promised to look into the issue.
Later, Health Secretary John Reid promises to sort out “wrinkles” in NHS that make it difficult to book GP appointments in advance.
Mr Reid defended the way Labour has modified the NHS since coming to power in 1997, but admitted that there were still some issues that needed to be addressed.
“The vast majority of NHS family doctors offer both urgent appointments within 48 hours and pre-booked appointments in advance for patients who want them, ” he said.
“It’s important to remember that in 1997 most people were complaining they couldn’t see a GP for a week or more. That situation has been transformed. The vast majority of people now can see a family doctor within 48 hours.
“However as when any new system is introduced there are wrinkles to be sorted out.”
Mr Reid went on to propose a system where doctors who see the highest percentage of their patients on the day of the patients’ choosing would be “rewarded” and that Labour is “discussing incentivising family doctors.as part of their new contract”.
Conservative health spokesman Andrew Lansley said the Labour leader’s comments showed he was “out of touch” with what was going on in the NHS and pledged to scrap such targets.
“It is his government that set the targets which distorts the way GPs want to run their practice and constricts patient choice,” Mr Lansley said.
“Mr Blair does not know what is going on or what the effects are. The time has come to get rid of these political targets and the government that imposed them.”
The Labour Party this morning confirmed that the problem raised on Question Time affected two per cent of GP surgeries, according to a Department of Health survey, and said trust executives were informing surgeries that the practice must cease.
But speaking on the Today programme this morning, the chairman of the British Medical Association’s GP committee said this “rather crude target” was affecting a significant number of surgeries.
“We’ve always felt that this has been a crude target which has distorted priorities. The problem is we’re trying to give patients longer appointments, we’re trying to give them more time,” he explained.
“You’ve only got so much time in the working day and it’s a fairly simple arithmetical fact that if you have to keep more appointments free for booking on the day, there will be less appointments available for patients to book in advance.”
However, he accepted that targets had been introduced following complaints that people were not able to see their GP when they wished to do so.
