Montgomeryshire Assembly Member, Russell George, believes that access to some key health services in rural Mid Wales are still a real cause for concern.
The AM took the opportunity during the National Assembly’s first sitting of 2014, to question Welsh Ministers about the provision of out of hours mental health services, as well as the problems of attracting and recruiting GPs to rural surgeries.
Mr. George brought these issues to the attention of both the First Minister and the Health Minister, after they became frequent agenda items during meetings with the Montgomeryshire GP cluster group.
Commenting, Mr. George said:
“I regularly meet with the Montgomeryshire GP Cluster Group to discuss issues of mutual interest and concern in the constituency.
“There were two issues that kept emerging at these meetings – the first was the poor level of mental health service that patients in North Powys are receiving from Betsi Cadwaladr Health Board and the second is the desperate need to attract and recruit GPs to many of our rural practices.
“GPs are telling me that they are seeing shocking incidents of out of hours mental health care because the admissions and referral system has simply broken; this is just unacceptable.
“While I understand that Powys Health Board’s new CEO and its Quality and Safety Committee are examining this issue, GPs feel patients are still being put at risk because the system is not working.
“GPs in Montgomeryshire want reassurance that the Government will not tolerate this level of service.”
The AM also said that there was a potential ‘crisis’ brewing if the issue of GP recruitment and retention was not urgently addressed. He added:
“One GP told me that his practice had spent over £2,000 on advertising to recruit for a vacant full-time position and did not receive one application.
“Clearly difficulties with rural recruitment threaten the practice of family medicine, so it is perfectly legitimate for these GPs to ask how the Welsh Government is working with health boards, the General Practitioners Committee for Wales and the Wales Deanery, to develop innovative training and recruitment initiatives to attract and keep GPs in rural Wales.”
