Patients with non-urgent needs could get an appointment see a GP within two weeks under new plans to reform health care.
Health and Social Care Secretary Thérèse Coffey will announce the changes today (22) as part of her ‘Plan for Patients’.
NHS Digital figures show that 15% – 3.9 million – of the 25.9 million GP appointments made in England in August occurred at least two weeks after the appointment was made.
Patients who have urgent needs will still be offered same-day access.
Ms Coffey – who is also Deputy Prime Minister – will also try to help ease the 8am scramble for appointments as the NHS rolls out new telephone systems.
The systems, already used by some surgeries, will mean that patients are not automatically cut off if there is no-one available to take their call.
Patients will be told their place in the queue and maybe asked a few simple questions or offered information about practice opening times while waiting.
Ms Coffey will also outline plans for patients to be able to look at how local surgeries are performing compared to each other with regard to patient access.
Patients will be able to access data showing how their GP practice is performing compared to other local surgeries with regards to the number of appointments delivered and how long people need to wait for care.
But leading GPs have slammed the plans saying they will have “minimal impact” on patient care.
And publishing “league tables” of surgeries will not “improve access or standards of care”, the Royal College of GPs said.
Meanwhile Ms Coffey, will say the Government will “free up funding” for practices to employ more roles, including GP assistants and more advanced nurse practitioners, but officials have not outlined how much money will be made available.
Government officials have estimated 1.2 million appointments each year can be handled by other surgery staff.
