5 million patients were unable to book an appointment with a GP in October.
According to The Times:
Problems with access to family doctors will drive patients to accident & emergency and exacerbate pressure on hospitals, campaigners said yesterday.
Another two million people faced a wait of more than a month to see their doctor, the highest number since the records began, in 2017, and 4.3 million waited for more than a fortnight.
The figures, which highlight the creaking state of the health service, are based on analysis of the GP patient survey and surgery appointment data from NHS Digital.
The Labour Party, which provided the analysis, is pushing to abolish tax breaks for non-doms and use the revenue to train a new generation of doctors and nurses.
Ministers are resigned to a torrid winter in hospitals and are pressing the NHS to intensify its efforts to reduce long delays for emergency care in the hope that they will be able to point next year to signs of progress.
The government said last night that Labour’s figures did not show rising appointment numbers since the survey was carried out, but some around Rishi Sunak, the prime minister, fear that the NHS will be a big issue at the next general election.
Ministers have conceded that there is little hope of meeting key targets by 2024.
According to the GP Patient Survey this year, 13.8 per cent of patients, about one in seven, did not get a GP appointment the last time they tried to book one, excluding those who got other help from the practice.
The comparable figure for last year was 8.1 per cent. Among the most common reasons were practices not allowing patients to book ahead and a lack of appointments.
GPs held 31.9 million appointments in October this year and 30.2 million in the same month last year, suggesting that the number of people unable to get appointments rose from 2.7 million to 5.2 million.
Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, said: “Among those millions of patients unable to get an appointment there could be serious conditions going undiagnosed until it’s too late.”