Patients will have to wait weeks for GP appointments even if a Conservative government fulfils a promise of thousands more doctors, analysis suggests.
Waiting times will “rocket” without drastic measures to cut the numbers visiting a doctor, according to senior GPs. Three-week waits will become the norm unless doctors put in more hours of overtime every week, the findings suggest.
A survey of 830 doctors by the GP magazine Pulse suggests that average waits for an appointment are now 13 days, up from ten days two years ago.
Ministers have pledged to recruit 5,000 extra GPs by 2020 to help to control family doctor waiting times, although numbers have continued to dip.
Analysis by Pulse of rising population figures and increasing demand for appointments suggests