Is the government trying to break the GP service?

Not having a break is not the same as not being able to have a quick pee. A break means a sit down, a cuppa and something to eat if you want it.
However Margaret Thatcher was famous for not understanding why people needed "comfort breaks". Neither did she sleep much. Shoulda been a nurse!

I live in a rural area, our surgery seems to cope well, they already open from 7am > 8pm and can offer appointments at short notice. I requested an appointment earlier this wek and got one a few hours later that day.

Different scenario here went last Monday for an appointment. I took the first availability which is on 31 January. A wait of nearly 3 weeks!!! Don't think that's acceptable.

Our surgery has it's appointments online, just login and find one that suits.

I phoned my surgery on Friday lunchtime and asked to speak with a Doctor. My GP telephoned back within half an hour and asked if I could get to the surgery for 2.20 that day. I arrived early and was seen straight away.

Over the years, the practise has been built up from a two-doctor practise in a converted terraced house to a purpose built Health Centre with about 15 GPs and support staff.

Adjacent to our A&E is an out-of-hours GP service which takes a lot of the pressure off the A&E.

We're lucky although people still complain. There are other areas I know of where I wouldn't like to fall ill!

Lillie, There are private GPs.

I work in a gp surgery in a pleasant market town, good schools and housing. We have had 4 GPs retire over past 5 years and finding replacements is nigh on impossible. We use Locums but it's not the same as a new partner or salaried doctor as locums just see patients which of course is necessary but do not do all the related admin which is a huge workload, I.e hospital discharge and outpatient letters to read, test results to process, long term condition monitoring and endless repeat prescriptions to check etc etc. We have medical students and none of them seem interested in the life of a GP. I don't think GPs really object to starting earlier or finishing later but if your doctor was there on Saturday they would probably have Monday off so how would that increase appointment availability? The whole system is close to collapse and we need more doctors choosing to become GPs by making it an attractive career not the relentless unappreciated slog it can sometimes be. Blaming GPs for the current crisis is not helpful.

I know there are private GPs daphne, I actually quoted their rates here on page 2 of this discussion.

Yes, I've quoted some of them too.

So people don't have to hang around to see a GP. They can get an immediate and be referred to a private hospital. That's queue jumping, which contradicts what you've just written.

But how is it queue jumping if they wish to pay a private doctor and get admitted to a private hospital? It's actually relieving the NHS of patients, not taking someone else's place.

For urgent or out-of-hours non crisis illnesses, what on earth was the reason to close down so many of the walk-in centres? Having a few of those in every town would solve most of these problems at a stroke, but they have mostly gone.

The rest of the A+E problems would be solved by creating a load of local convalescent homes. They'd need to re-name them as Post-Hospital Customer Support Systems or something similar - a place where the 'bed-blockers' could go to complete their recovery. Does my memory trick me that these used to exist here?
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Because many doctors who work privately also work for the NHS. They cannot be in two places at once.
Also, private hospitals do not perform all operations. They are selective, but if anything goes wrong a private patient has to go to the NHS hospital.

They closed them down, Pamish, the cottage hospitals and the convalescent homes. Not efficient enough.

They thought they were not efficient enough Jen, just as they thought they would save money by cutting in so many areas. Looks like there was no truth in that rumour

Of course it's queue jumping, Lillie. It's usually the same consultants who perform the surgery. They work a fixed number of days for the NHS, which they won't increase when there's high demand. They know those who can afford it will pay to have the treatment faster. If consultants increased their NHS hours, the queues would be shorter, but the wealthier wouldn't be able to use their money to get to the front of it.

Well, daphne, if I were a private consultant who had to increase my hours in the NHS, (-to help lessen the queues-), by letting go of my private patients, I'd be out of this country like a shot!
The day I can be referred by a GP to a top consultant, have an MRI and a battery of tests, be booked in for surgery all within a week in the NHS, is the day I will give up paying private health insurance, and I am not wealthy. I know this type of service should be available to everyone, BUT when you have people in "important" jobs who need to get their treatment out of the way quickly, paying for private health care will be appealing. We don't really want to see Teresa May in the long queue for her diabetes follow-up check while she's sorting out Brexit.

Heard on the radio this morning that in about a third of the areas in England, GP hospital referrals are vetted by a panel which is part of the clinical commissioning group. Referrals may be delayed or even refused at this point. Bureacratic delays include : the doctor has not told us whether or not patient smokes. There was a woman who had been refused varicose vein surgery because the clinical commissioning group had decided not to pay for it. This is a consequence of Hunt's major reorganisation of "primary care". Just to remind anyone who has forgotten, Cameron in 2010 promised there would be no major organisations but after the election Hunt came up with this convoluted bill. Doctors were against it and warned it would lead to a new "postcode lottery". So now that they have re-organised it is being used in places to delay and ration treatment. The doctors were right.

nanatobe 's post confirms what's happening in our, very similar, area. I apologise for repeating myself but a major issue is the way this government (like previous governments) sees public service as something Bad, something to be diminished and where possible eradicated.
The changing demographic in patients and in doctors isn't news. Yes, more women become GP's in the same way that other so called caring professions also attract more women. Women have the babies and still carry the bulk of child care responsibilities, so part time working is more likely than it is with male colleagues. The rights and wrongs of that are a whole different argument but my main point is that persistent government interference, usually against the advice/knowledge of the practitioners in various work places is leading to real problems. There are only a finite number of GP's, how on earth are they supposed to spread themselves over 7 days ?

Are you really claiming that some people are more important than others, where health is concerned, Lillie?

In most cases I don't see it as queue jumping. The problem is bed space not availability of consultants. I can usually get an appointment to see a consultant within 2/3 weeks, but if I want surgery I would have to wait many weeks for a bed. Yes the same consultants work in NHS and private, but they still do NHS work in the private hospitals where beds are available. My impending surgery is being done by an NHS consultant in a private hospital.

The real problem in hospitals is bed blocking, which tends not to happen in private hospitals, now i wonder why !!!

Exactly Wobblybits it's down to the system. The NHS is brilliant in so many areas, but not in others, and beds not being available for consultants to operate is a huge problem.

If you read my last post daphnedill you will see that I carefully said that a fast, efficient service should be available to EVERYONE. I was speaking about "important" jobs, not whether people are important. If a company relies on the expertise of its top management to make important decisions, then yes their health is of great significance and that's why private healthcare is provided as part of the package. No point paying Mark Carney £1 million a year to have him off sick waiting in the NHS queue for a new hip. And an injured top sportsman needs that op today to get him back on his feet. It's all relative.

So an injured sportsman is more important than a gran with cancer, is that right?

Mark Carney is no more important than anyone else. No one should get preferred treatment simply because of who they are.

Come on DJ, you are bending Lillie's words to make an argument, I'm sure most of us understand what she means. A farmer friend of ours had a hernia, which on The NHS would have been a low priority op, as it was not life threatening. But he could not work, so it was cost effective for him to pay for private surgery. This would often be the case for anyone self employed without the advantage of sick pay.

We would all like instant treatment on the NHS, but it will never happen.

Since the Tories took office, they have removed nearly 15000 beds from NHS hospitals. Then they complain about bed-blocking.
If there are no beds you can't bed-block.