Tag Archives: gp waiting times

Liberal Democrats uncover fall in funding for GP practices

By NewsHound | Mon 22nd January 2024 - 10:09 am

GP funding slashed by £350 million since 2019 as patients left waiting weeks for an appointment

Funding for GP practices has seen a £350 million real terms cut in just four years

Average funding per GP patient has fallen by 7% in real terms to £165 a year, while worst hit areas have seen funding per patient slashed by 16%

1.5 million patients waited four weeks or more for an appointment in November

Lib Dems warn it is “unforgivable” the government is slashing GP funding at time of rising demand

Funding for GP practices has been slashed by £350 million in real terms since 2019, House of Commons Library research commissioned by the Liberal Democrats has revealed.

The analysis shows NHS funding for GP practices in England was 6.9% lower in 2022/23 compared to 2018/19, once inflation is taken into account. The average funding per patient was £165 in 2022/23, a real terms cut of £12 per patient over the past four years.

The Liberal Democrats said it was “unforgivable” that the government was slashing funding for GP practices at a time of rising demand, leaving millions of people struggling to see a doctor when they need to.

The latest figures show that in November 2023, a staggering 1.5 million GP appointments took place four weeks or more after being booked, making up one in twenty (4.8%) of all appointments that month. 5.4 million people waited two weeks or more for the GP appointment in November, or over one in six (17.3%) appointments.

Posted in News and Press releases | Also tagged ed davey | 2 Comments

Waiting list for diagnostic tests reaches 1.6 million – up 50% since 2019

By The Voice | Mon 25th September 2023 - 11:35 pm

The waiting list for diagnostic tests has risen by 525,000 since June 2019 to 1.6 million

NHS target: less than 1% of people should be waiting more than 6 weeks for these tests – currently 1 in 4 wait 6 weeks or longer

Lib Dem Leader Ed Davey calls for an expansion of community diagnostic centres and the legal right to see your GP in seven days as his party makes fixing the NHS a pillar of their conference

NHS waiting lists for basic diagnostic tests have grown by 50% since June 2019, up to 1.6 million. The research from the House of Commons Library, commissioned by the Liberal Democrats, also shows that over 25% of people are waiting more than 6 weeks for one of these tests, the NHS target is less than 1%.

The 15 types of tests that make up the list provided by the Commons Library include MRIs, CT scans, Echocardiography, and DEXA scans. For MRIs the waiting list has spiked by a third up to 280,000 thousand. For CT scans, it has shot up by 40,000 to 180,000.

A separate FOI from the Liberal Democrats to NHS Trusts has revealed the longest wait time for certain standard diagnostic scans.

In Sandwell and West Birmingham NHS Trusts response, they said that the longest wait for an MRI which took place in the past 12 months was 914 days. At the same Trust, someone waited 367 days for a CT scan, 665 days for a non-urgent x-ray, and 693 days for an Ultrasound.

For an Echocardiogram, someone at Wye Valley Trust waited 49 weeks. For an Angiography, at Milton Keynes Trust the longest wait was 475 days.

Posted in News and Press releases | Also tagged ed davey | 1 Comment

26 January 2023 – today’s press releases

By Mark Valladares | Thu 26th January 2023 - 10:30 pm

Welsh Government Not Monitoring GP Waiting Times
HMRC and Zahawi investigation: Sunak must rule out a stitch up
£220,000 Johnson bailout fund for “cost-of-lying crisis”

Welsh Government Not Monitoring GP Waiting Times

Information obtained by the Welsh Liberal Democrats shows the Welsh Government has no idea how long waiting times for GPs are across Wales.

The Welsh Liberal Democrats claim this hinders the Welsh Government’s ability to see where resources should be directed to help local health boards.

The Welsh Government is not collecting data on how long GP waiting times are across Wales according to information uncovered by the Welsh Liberal Democrats. This is despite …