NHS, Opinion, Doctors in the spotlight
Solving the A&E spending drain: More Locums in Primary Care
In a recent survey conducted by Network Locum (now Lantum), we found that out of 2,000 British adults, 34% of people who asked for a GP appointment as soon as possible had to wait for over 48 hours to be seen and four per cent admitted going to A&E as they weren't able to get an appointment in the last 12 months.
The findings also suggest that the lack of GP appointments could put people off visiting the doctor altogether. Just over one in six (18 per cent) female respondents said they put off booking an appointment because they were worried that they would be wasting their GP’s time. A quarter of women also admitted that they had stored up a number of concerns to discuss in one GP visit.
Thirteen per cent of respondents said they ‘self-diagnosed’ and bought available medication in a pharmacy because they could not get a doctor’s appointment.
The knock on effect of poor organisation and planning primary care has often been cited as one of the major pressures on Britain’s A&E departments.
Without organised and easy access to Primary Care, patients will continually strain the emergency services as often, once you’ve called your GP to find the next appointment is not for 4 weeks and the answer phone message directs you to hospital anyway, you’ll go to the next available point of care: The Emergency Room.
Melissa Morris, our CEO, says: “It’s very worrying that people have to wait over 48 hours to be seen when they feel they need to see a doctor urgently."
“Primary care is the foundation of our health service and we need to ensure that surgeries can get reliable staff in to meet the demand. Until we achieve this, the NHS will keep putting a plaster on a huge wound by pumping money into A&Es.”
“Instead, we must look at improved funding for GP practices, extended surgery hours and flexible staffing models that can help GP practices meet the demand from their local community.”
With the average A&E visit costing the NHS £88, Network Locum (now Lantum) believes that the problem may have unnecessarily cost the NHS as much as £120 million in a single year.”
Whereas, we know from experience, that GP locums are an important cornerstone of Primary Care and we set up Network Locum (now Lantum) to address this directly, and take the strain off practice managers looking for affordable, reliable locums. Our model is working to solve these problems and create a landscape where everybody has access to healthcare, when they need it, keeping people out of A&E.
