North Wales Assembly Member Mark Isherwood has challenged the Cabinet Secretary for Health after Ruabon Medical Centre in Wrexham announced that it will end its contract with the NHS after being unable to fill two vacant doctor posts.
Asking an Urgent Question in the Assembly Chamber this week, Mr Isherwood spoke of the GP crisis facing North Wales, referred to other GP Practices in North Wales which had announced that they were ending their contracts, and called on the Cabinet Secretary to respond to the latest announcement of a closure in Wrexham.
He said:
“This surgery, the Ruabon Medical Centre, is only the latest to announce that it will be ending its NHS contract with the Health Board because it’s unable to fill two vacant doctor posts. Last month, it was the Rashmi practice in Old Colwyn. Over the last year, we’ve seen the same in Prestatyn, Rhuddlan, Wrexham, Conwy, and the British Medical Association’s Dr Charlotte Jones, General Practice Committee Chair, has said: ‘Surgeries handing back their contracts to the Health Board is a real time demonstration of how some General Practices are at breaking point and see this as the only solution open to them.’
“The North Wales Local Medical Committee warned at a meeting in the Assembly in June 2014 that General Practice in North Wales was facing crisis, with several practices unable to fill vacancies, and many GPs considering retirement.
“Early this year, GPs in North Wales wrote to the First Minister, accusing him of being out of touch with the reality of the challenges facing them. How, therefore, do you respond to the concern expressed by the Royal College of General Practitioners in the Assembly in June this year, that the Multidisciplinary Team Model being introduced instead in North Wales by the Health Board is needed, but it’s based on an overseas model with a higher ratio of GPs to other disciplines, that it will lose the holistic view and continuity provided by GPs, damaging the well-being of patients, and that the Health Board shouldn’t wait for a crisis to step up? It should have stepped up well in advance, as should the Welsh Government, given the years of warnings it has received.”
In his response the Health Secretary said ‘we recognise that primary care needs to change and we want to work with partners to deliver that to make sure people receive high-quality primary care,” but added ‘there are significant challenges that are out of our hands.’
Mr Isherwood added: “Yet more complacency from the Labour Welsh Government responsible for NHS Wales, as exiting GP numbers in North Wales grow and grow, despite years and years of warnings from the profession”.