UK GP consultation times shortest in the developed world

The Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) has warned that the 10 minute average length of GP consultation times in the UK is not long enough to properly assess patients living with multiple complex conditions.

Commenting on the issue, in response to the BBC Health Check week, Professor Helen Stokes-Lampard, chair of the RCGP, warned: “We have an ageing population in the UK, which is a great success of our society as a whole, but as our patients grow older many are inevitably living with more than one long-term condition, making the standard GP-patient consultation increasingly inadequate.

“GPs want to spend more time with our patients. We want the time to talk through all the different things that might be making a patient ill, and come up with a solid treatment plan in the best interests of their long term health – that’s what GPs do. But with so many patients living with multiple conditions, affecting both physical and mental health, this simply isn’t possible in 10 minutes.

“If we were able to offer longer patient consultations as standard, the current pressures facing general practice would make this incredibly difficult to fit in.

"Demand for our services has risen exponentially over the last few years, with recent research showing a 15 per cent rise in patient consultations since 2010, but the number of GPs has not risen in step. Longer consultation times for some would mean fewer consultations on offer overall.

“In England, the GP Forward View offers a lifeline for our profession with promises of £2.4 billion more a year for general practice and 5,000 more GPs by 2020.

These pledges need to be implemented as a matter of urgency, and we need to see similar promises in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

“But as it stands in England, there are two Sustainability and Transformation Plans that actually propose reducing the GP workforce, there are five that don’t mention the GP Forward View at all – and there are many others where the plans for general practice are vague at best. This is against all common sense – the future of our health service relies on high quality, robust general practice to underpin the rest of the NHS and provide care efficiently in the community.

“We need more GPs, more practice staff and more resources for general practice right across the UK so that we can offer our patients more appointments, and longer appointments to those who need them.”

Dr Chaand Nagpaul, of the BMA, said he agreed: “We spend less than other European countries. We have fewer doctors than other European nations.

"We have one third of the hospital beds per head compared to Germany for example, GPs spend less time per patient than any other European nations.

"We need to be addressing these issues as a priority."