North Wales Assembly Member Mark Isherwood has criticised the Welsh Government for failing to listen to years of warnings regarding the GP crisis facing Wales.
Speaking in an Assembly Debate on General Practice this week, Mr Isherwood, said despite campaigns by Doctors’ professional bodies warning them of the shortage of GPs across Wales, Labour Welsh Government failed to take action to address the problem.
He said:
“You have to go back five years when both BMA Cymru and the Royal College of General Practitioners aimed campaigns at Assembly Members warning them that we would get here, that 90 per cent of patient contacts are with General Practice and yet funding as the share of the NHS cake had fallen, and they’ve had to relaunch those campaigns now because they (the Welsh Government) didn’t listen.”
Mr Isherwood added:
“It is 31 months since the Chair of the North Wales Medical Committee came to this Assembly to say we had a crisis in North Wales, warning that several practices had been unable to fill vacancies and many GPs were seriously considering retirement because of their expanding work load, yet at the BMA Wales Conference last year, on the same weekend that another North Wales GP surgery gave notice that they will be terminating their contract with the Health Board, Labour First Minister Carwyn Jones claimed that there was no GP recruitment crisis.
“Convenient access to healthcare from GPs in general practice is key to the future of the Welsh NHS. It is more cost effective to care for patients in a primary care setting than elsewhere in the health service and by ensuring decent access to GP services we can help to keep our population healthier for longer, enable more people to successfully manage their conditions in the community, and avoid unnecessary and expensive hospital admissions. But general practice cannot do this without adequate resources. A move from denial to action is long overdue.”