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The philosophy of the GP ‘seven day working’
In recent times, spending on the NHS in The UK has amplified speedily which is presently £105 billion per annum. This investment has made it easier for to modernise the healthcare services, improve ability staffing ability access new, more beneficial drugs and remedies as well as the advantages from the much better care. The NHS ought to make up to £20 billion of long-term proficient savings by 2014/15 to match extra expectations on services from an aging populace as well as to have the capacity to continuously invest in new technologies and latest drugs.
This guide looks at the proposed 7 days working services in England and describes some of the changes and difficulties encountered when planning to extend services.
7 day working – What does this mean?
The Prime Minister wants GPs to open for up to 12 hours every day by 2020 to relieve pressure on hospitals and give working people access to a doctor at weekends.
This is being driven by 3 primary factors:
- Desire to improve quality of care
- Services redesign and reconfiguration
- Improving access and convenience.
Vision
Cameron said: “People need to be able to see their GP at a time that suits them and their family. We will also support thousands more GP practices to stay open longer – giving millions of patient’s better access to their doctor.
Access to a GP seven days a week by 2020 would be guaranteed under a Tory government, David Cameron will announce on Tuesday, backing the measure with a £100m fund.
Labour has made a separate commitment to guarantee GP access within 48 hours.
The prime minister’s announcement is designed to give a clear commitment that all NHS patients would be able to see their GP between 8am and 8pm, seven days a week.
He will also promise that every patient will have a named GP responsible for their care outside hospital.
Significance?
- In practical terms, achieving the same care quality throughout the week will mean more NHS staff, especially senior doctors, on site at hospitals at weekends and evenings. There are also implications for access to general practice. It also requires other services being available to enable clinicians to provide high quality care as usual. This includes diagnostic and clinical support, social care, transfer services and administrative support.
- Some individual hospitals have developed the availability of some services over seven days. But as yet there has been no robust modelling of what the impact of seven-day services would be more generally on staff numbers or working patterns, the financial implications, or clinical outcomes for individual specialties.
- The Government hopes that the measures will end the “treadmill” of rigid 10-minute appointments and allow doctors to spend more time on patients who require the most help.
- Everyone will have access to a family doctor seven days a week by the end of the decade, David Cameron will pledge on Tuesday.
- Groups of GP surgeries will be encouraged to band together in order to share the workload of covering clinics at evenings and weekends. Family doctors will also consult patients via email and internet video link as part of the plans.
- Mr. Cameron will say that the Government will provide hundreds of millions of pounds in funding to ensure that as many surgeries as possible open from 8am to 8pm.
Implications and opposition
However, Mr. Cameron’s promise will put the Conservatives on a collision course with doctors’ unions, which have labelled the plans unrealistic.
In the current and foreseeable economic climate, with huge financial pressure on the NHS, we do not believe resources could be freed up to deliver routine and elective services seven days a week.
- Doctors have claimed previously that there are too few GPs to staff the seven-day week and that doing it could have a negative impact on weekday services.
- Under Mr. Cameron’s plans, many more doctors will also be required to consult via email, telephone and video-call software such as Skype.
- Patients with long-term conditions will be offered “tele care” technology to monitor their health, reducing the need for surgery visits.
- The plans are expected to cost £400 million over the next five years. They follow a £50 million trial earlier this year in which hundreds of surgeries opened for seven days a week in 20 GP areas.
A source said: “We’re not being prescriptive as to how doctors do this — we understand that GPs will know best how to set this up — but we want to give them as many of the tools needed as possible.