Dear Patient,
The British Medical Association (BMA) has called for GP appointment times in England to increase from 10 minutes to 15 minutes and for the number of consultations per doctor to be limited to 25 patients per day.
In view of this, the practice has decided to increase the duration of appointment slot to 15mins from Monday 27th January 2025. It will still be ‘one appointment for one problem’ and you will need to book further appointment if you need to discuss another problem.
An ageing population, increasing medical complexity and rising multi- co-morbidities require longer patient contacts. BMA strongly recommends practices move to an average of 15-minute appointments.
By extending appointments to 15 minutes, practices can reduce the need for repeated contacts with patients while still preserving quality of care and patient satisfaction. It can also support continuity of care, which is increasingly recognised as one of the key contributors to better patient outcomes and experiences
The recommendations are outlined in a new report that aims to tackle the “unsustainable” pressure caused by rising demand, falling resources, and staff shortages. The BMA said that GPs were currently forced to see up to 50 patients a day in 10 minute appointment slots that were inadequate for the increasingly complex conditions that patients present with.
This should be done without increasing the total time GPs spend consulting in their day, meaning, a reduction in the absolute number of appointments per session. This is to ensure GPs and other clinicians can practice safely. The focus must be on delivering safe, high-quality care driven by the needs of the patients and their practices.
The measures will help ease the substantial workload pressure on practices and make care safer for patients, the BMA said. In a recent survey carried out by the BMA 98% of GPs described their workload as “heavy” or “unmanageable,” while more than half thought that local primary care services had deteriorated in the past 12 months.
In a separate BMA survey 68% of GPs thought that it would be better to provide longer consultations of greater quality, even if that meant patient had to wait longer for a routine appointment.
Moving forward, should you require a routine appointment, you can submit a request via our website, and we will aim to offer you a routine appointment in 3-4 weeks.
For more urgent appointments, please call the surgery at 8 am for an on-the-day appointment.
If we are fully booked on the day, then we will signpost you to call NHS111. We have a provision wherein 111 can book a limited number of patients directly into our clinics on that day if appropriate.
Alternatively, we do sometimes have evening and weekend appointments available through our Primary Care Network. If this is a better solution for you, please ask the receptionist to book you in at our HUB. Please note these appointments may NOT be at West Timperley Medical Centre
We will continue to monitor and review our new approach but hope that introducing these changes will benefit both patients and staff and ultimately lead to a more efficient way of working for the future.
We thank you for your continued support and understanding
Kind regards
The partners
Dr Effingham, Dr Stratford-Smith, Dr Barnes and Dr Janarththanan
West Timperley Medical Centre