North Wales Assembly Member, Mark Isherwood has urged the new Welsh Government to listen and act on the concerns of GPs in Wales and to address the pressures facing the NHS caused by the closure of community hospitals and Minor Injury Units.
Speaking in today’s debate on Health and Social Care, Mr Isherwood highlighted the difficulties facing GPs throughout Wales and criticised Labour for ignoring the views of patients and slashing community hospital beds.
Mr Isherwood, who yesterday attended the Royal College of GP Wales Assembly event ‘Strengthening General Practice to Support the NHS’, said:
“At a BMA Cymru briefing in the Assembly in June 2014, the Chair of the North Wales Local Medical Committee warned “General Practice in North Wales is in crisis, several practices have been unable to fill vacancies and many GPs are seriously considering retirement”.
“Early this year, GPs in North Wales wrote to this First Minister accusing him of being out of touch with the reality of the challenges facing them.
“The Royal College of GPs states that “General Practice in Wales provides 90% of NHS consultations for only 7.8% of the budget. Prolonged underinvestment means that funding for General Practice has been decreasing compared to the overall Welsh NHS. Yet we face the significant challenges of an ageing and growing population. Consultations are becoming longer and more complicated as we deal with an increasing number of patients with multiple chronic conditions”.
“As they stated in the Assembly yesterday, nearly 4 in 10 patients in Wales find it difficult to make a convenient GP appointment, up 4% in two years, 84% of GPs in Wales worry that they miss something serious with a patient due to pressures, more than 52% of GPs face significant recruitment issues and Wales needs to employ 400 more GPs.
“Given the GP shortage, we heard that models such as the multi-disciplinary team introduced in Prestatyn are needed. However, we also heard that this was based on an overseas model, which had a higher ratio of GPs to other disciplines, that we will lose the holistic view and continuity provided by GPs, damaging the wellbeing of patients, and that the Health Board is not stepping in until crisis or disaster.”
Criticising Labour’s decision to close community hospitals throughout Wales, despite bed occupancy levels of 95% and above, Mr Isherwood added:
“This Welsh Labour Government ignored the Flint Referendum in which 99.3% voted in favour of returning in-patient beds to Flint – and then ignored the Blaenau Ffestiniog referendum where an overwhelming majority voted in favour of returning beds there.
“When I visited Holywell Hospital, staff told me “extra investment in our local community hospitals, such as Holywell, and NHS community beds in Flint, would take pressure off our general hospitals, help tackle the A&E crisis and enable the health board to use its resources more efficiently”.
“As the head of the NHS in England said ‘Smaller community hospitals should play a bigger role, particularly in the care of older patients’.”
“Let us hope that this reshuffled Welsh Government starts listening at last”.