Mark Isherwood
North Wales Assembly Member Mark Isherwood has condemned the Welsh Health Minister, Mark Drakeford, for failing to engage with the concerns of a group of North Wales GPs, including a future shortage of GPs in the region.
Following a meeting with the GPs in January, Mr Isherwood, who is supporting the Royal College of General Practitioners Wales ‘Put Patients First: Back General Practice’ Campaign, wrote to the Minister outlining the GPs’ serious concerns and had hoped that the Minister would take action over these.
However, in a letter of response sent to Mr Isherwood, the Minister has instead boasted about funding and passed the buck to the Local Health Boards charged with implementing his Government’s policies.
He said:
“£570 million in additional funding has been made available to the NHS in Wales over the three years from 2014-15. It will be for Local Health Boards to determine the allocation of this funding.”
The 2013 Wales Audit Office Report on Health Finances found that although there had been real-term increases to health budgets in the other UK nations, only the devolved NHS in Wales had faced a real-terms reduction since 2010, which it described as unprecedented in UK history.
Mr Isherwood’s letter to the Minister had listed the concerns raised by the GPs, top of which was recruitment, where the average age of GPs in North Wales is over 50 but they can’t recruit Primary Care Staff and Doctors.
Other concerns included the shortage of beds at community hospitals because of the shortage of staff, the need for improved communication with secondary care, cross-border services, waiting lists, the fact they were promised the Home Enhanced Care Service two years ago, but are still waiting and constant changes, which are disruptive to their provision of healthcare.
Mr Isherwood said:
“I am extremely disappointed by the Health Minister’s response. His failure to engage urgently with the GPs genuine concerns, or to be held to account for these critical issues, is outrageous and unacceptable.
“As one North Wales GP told me ‘over 90% NHS contacts take place in Primary Care yet funding from Welsh Government into Primary Care keeps falling, in real terms, every year …….. If the Welsh Government wants to transfer more services into the community, then they have to ensure manpower and resources in place. It’s all very well paying lip service to this, but the stark reality is that Primary care is at breaking point in Wales, for many of the reasons Mark has already alluded to, and expecting more from a demoralised and overstretched workforce is a recipe for failure’.”
