Buckinghamshire GP waits revealed in new figures

The Government said the new data published by NHS Digital – which gives detailed information on appointments and waiting times for individual GP practices across England – will help patients “make a more informed choice about the practice they choose to visit”.

But the move has not been welcomed by everyone, with the Royal College of GPs criticising the lack of context around how different practices operate.

A total of 272,684 appointments took place at GP practices in the former NHS Buckinghamshire CCG area in October.

At least 47,031 (17%) of these had taken place more than a fortnight after being booked, and of those, 10,804 (4%) saw patients wait longer than 28 days.

In Buckinghamshire, the practices with the highest proportion of appointments occurring after a fortnight were:

• Highfield Surgery – 37% of 3,466 appointments took place more than two weeks after they had been booked in October

• The John Hampden Surgery – 35.6% of 3,052 appointments

• The Misbourne Surgery – 32.4% of 5,081 appointments

• Gladstone Road Surgery – 31.5% of 2,765 appointments

• Desborough Surgery – 30.3% of 5,255 appointments

At the other end of the scale:

• Stokenchurch Medical Centree – just 3.5% of 5,759 appointments saw patients wait longer than a fortnight in October

• Chiltern House Med Centre – 3.9% of 2,846 appointments

• Threeways Surgery – 4.1% of 3,383 appointments

• Iver Medical Centre – 6.4% of 3,927 appointments

• Cherrymead Surgery – 6.6% of 7,024 appointments

NHS Digital cautioned that GP workloads can be affected by several factors such as the demographic of patients registered at the practice, how deprived the area is and the number of care homes the practice offers services to.

Chair Professor Kamila Hawthorne said: “A record 36.1 million consultations were delivered in October, almost 40% of these on the day they were booked and more than 71% delivered in-person, the highest proportion since before the pandemic.”

Prof Hawthorne said GP workloads have escalated while the number of fully qualified full-time equivalent GPs has fallen by 719 across England since 2019.

“GP teams are just as frustrated as patients when they don’t have the resources and time to deliver the high standard of care to patients they want to, and in some areas where the pressures are even greater, this is happening more,” she added.

Meanwhile, Rachel Power, chief executive of the Patients Association, said primary care should engage with patients and find out their priorities, such as whether face-to-face appointments are priority for them, to help the NHS improve triage and resource prioritisation.