BMA claim that 200,000 people see their GP each week in Northern Ireland is 'debunked' - DUP MLA

Diane Dodds was responding to a News Letter story which showed a contradiction between recent Department of Health (DoH) figures on the number of interactions between GPs and patients and a claim made by the British Medical Association (BMA).

The union said that GPs have faced “relentless criticism that patients are unable to see their GP or get an appointment, despite the Department’s own data showing this is not the case; 200,000 appointments are delivered every week, that is 10% of the population seeing their GP every week”.

However, DoH statistics for June obtained by the News Letter show that the figures relied on show “encounters” not appointments – and includes contacts with staff outside GPs practices, such as counsellors and pharmacists.

The official figures showed that there were 123,926 telephone or face to face encounters between doctors and their patients in June – and that the majority of contacts were carried out by telephone rather than face to face.

DoH say that patients can also be counted twice on any given day if, for example, a patient telephones their GP practice and is triaged by a member of the clinical team, resulting in a face-to-face encounter with a member of the clinical team on the same day.

The BMA is currently backing industrial action for an increased contract offer from the health service, arguing GPs need more core funding to protect the service.

Responding to the News Letter story, DUP MLA Diane Dodds said GPs are “an invaluable part” of the health service.

“They are often the first port of call for patients and GP practices are undoubtedly under pressure. I fully appreciate the difficulties they face. There is a continually expanding workload with insufficient staff to run the service at its optimum.

“However, making claims about patients ‘seeing their GP’ which are then debunked only serves to increase cynicism and undermines the ability to highlight real issues impacting on GP surgeries”.

The DUP health spokesperson also questioned the fact that contacts with multidisciplinary teams (MDTs) are included in the figures. They include pharmacists, physiotherapists, mental health practitioners, social workers and paramedics.

The Upper Bann MLA said: “The role of multidisciplinary teams in GP practices is absolutely vital and the initial funding for MDTs was secured by the DUP in 2017. The use of MDTs will be key to reform of our health service and can help stabilise practices in crisis.

“We should be encouraging their use and highlighting their success, but including these contacts within the figures for direct GP appointments is misleading and inaccurate.

“Whilst no one questions the commitment and integrity of our GPs and all allied health professionals there are legitimate unanswered questions for the Department of Health surrounding current levels of accountability for activity in GP surgeries. The Care Quality Commission regulates GPs in England but there is not the same inspection activity in Northern Ireland.

“The public should be able to have confidence that all practices are operating services at the same standard. That includes the appointments made available every day and how this varies from practice to practice. There continues to be scant detail around this, something the Northern Ireland Audit Office has drawn attention to”. The DoH data was extrapolated from submissions by 252 practices to estimate activity/encounters across all practices in Northern Ireland. The department said the data “does not reflect all activity carried out in General Practice, only those recorded as encounters, nor does it take account of how long the encounter lasts or the complexity”.

The BMA has pointed to evidence given to a Stormont committee by Peter May, the permanent secretary at the DoH – as well as an NI Audit Office report in March, both of which cite a 200,000 figure.

The News Letter asked the BMA about the difference between 200,000 patient encounters per week mentioned by Mr May, and 200,000 people seeing their GP each week. We also asked how this, or the NI Audit Office report figure – which also incorporates the whole practice team, including MDT staff – supports the BMA claim of 200,000 people seeing their GP per week.

There was no response at the time of writing.