Overstretched GPs ‘unable to deliver safe care’
Fresh evidence of the NHS under pressure as a leading doctor warns stretched GPs see up to 70 patients a day, and new figures show a big rise in ambulances turned away from hospitals.
The chairman of the Royal College of General Practitioners said GPs are “unable to deliver safe, effective care”. Dr Clare Gerada called for the number of GPs to “urgently increase” to meet patient demand.
The news delivers a second blow for the health department today after new figures revealed a “major increase” in the number of ambulances being turned away from Accident and Emergency departments.
Dr Gerada claimed that GPs receive 9 per cent of the NHS budget but attend to 90 per cent of the patients.
Speaking ahead of a summit on the A&E crisis convened by the Labour party, Dr Gerada said: “I’m sorry that we cannot deliver the sort of care that patients deserve and need.
“We are trying our best and we are working all hours but it is actually becoming unsafe for my profession to be seeing 60 or 70 patients a day.”
She added: “We have the lowest number per head of population of GPs than we have had in our history and we have a predominantly female workforce – which is fine but some women work part-time because they have babies.
Today’s emergency summit follows the publication of figures obtained by Labour from the House of Commons Library which show a 24 per cent rise in the number of hospitals turning away patients in need of emergency care last year.
In 2011/12, 287 hospitals in England reached capacity and were no longer able to accept any new patients brought in by ambulance – apart from cases deemed to be life threatening. But in 2012/13, the number of A&E “diverts” rose to 357, Labour said.
Operating theatres used as wards
A spot check on Charing Cross Hospital as part of a regional review by the General Medical Council (GMC) in November found that the hospital had used operating theatres as intensive care units.
The GMC told the Evening Standard that this was the symptom of a healthcare system working “close to full capacity”.
The GMC’s report said: “We heard that an operating theatre was occasionally used to ventilate patients where there was no critical care bed available; and that appropriate nursing support was not provided on these occasions.
“As well as affecting the quality of care of these individual critical care patients, this practice can also result in delays to emergency surgery.”
“It also provides a poor and potentially distressing environment for friends and family visiting patients.”
The GMC said the Trust was aware of the situation and was monitoring it. “However, supervisors in anaesthetics we met reported that the use of theatre for ventilating patients had recently begun to increase again,” the report noted.
‘Rising demand’
A government spokesman said: “The NHS is currently meeting the four hour A&E waiting time target. However, we know that over the past few years A&E has been put under increasing pressure because of rising demand.
“That is why this government is looking at how we address the long term problems facing A&E, something the Labour Party failed to do while they were in office.”
However, Dr Gerada said: “The solution as Mr Hunt (Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt) said, we need to urgently increase the number of GPs and practice nurses.”
On Bank Holiday Monday, the Royal Liverpool Hospital was forced to divert patients to nearby hospitals, Shadow Health Secretary Andy Burnham said.
Read more: FactCheck - Hunt for the truth on the A&E 'crisis'
The GMB union said that over recent weeks some hospitals in Essex, Kent and London have been forced to turn ambulances away.
A&E diverts, where an emergency department has temporarily closed because of the lack physical space and/or staff capacity to deal with any additional patients, should only occur as a “last resort”, according to official guidance.
Experts have recently said that emergency care systems could collapse in six months as a result of rising demand.
The College of Emergency Medicine (CEM) called for “fundamental change” in the way emergency care is run, warning that A&E units are facing their biggest challenge in more than a decade as departments grapple with “unsustainable workloads” and lack of staff.
And the Foundation Trust Network, which represents more than 200 health trusts in England, warned that A&E services were in danger of collapse in six months time as a result of “huge pressure”.