‘EVERY day junior doctors despair as they see operations cancelled and treatment postponed for the millions on the waiting lists because our health services are in crisis.’
BMA junior doctors committee co-chairs Dr Vivek Trivedi and Dr Robert Laurenson were responding yesterday to new data published by NHS England which claimed that the 7-million strong NHS treatment waiting lists had been exacerbated by their 72-hour strike last week.
They continued: ‘But rescheduling appointments as a result of the strike action could have been avoided if the Health Secretary had come to the table and negotiated an agreed settlement with us before any strike action was taken.
‘The NHS had more than two months’ notice that we would strike for 72 hours if the ballot was successful; the government has been in no doubt about our campaign for full pay restoration for over six months and this has been borne out by the number of junior doctors in England who have taken part in the industrial action.
‘We are due to meet with the Health Secretary, Steve Barclay, next week.
‘Junior doctors are keen to see their pay restored and to avoid further disruption to patient care, so if the Health Secretary is as committed to finding a settlement as he claims to be, it is within his gift to offer a deal so junior doctors can earn what they are worth, avoid further strike action and give patients the care they deserve.’
Meanwhile, NHS data shows that the number of GP practices in England is now the lowest on record, forcing the number of patients per surgery to an all-time high.
More than 1,200 GP practices have closed in eight years, forcing elderly and vulnerable patients to travel ever further for care, an investigation reveals.
Shortages of GPs have seen surgeries closing and merging to cover ever greater populations, with rural areas among the most stretched.
Leading doctors said the situation has reached a point of ‘crisis’, with NHS figures showing 6,418 practices were open in January of this year – a fall of 1,205 since September 2015.
As a result, the number of patients per practice has reached almost 10,000, with each surgery now having to serve an extra 2,241 patients on average, and patients forced to travel longer distances.
Professor Kamila Hawthorne, chairman of the Royal College of GPs, said too many practices are being forced to close, adding: ‘Decades of underfunding and poor resource planning have left general practice in crisis.’
