Written question WQ87532

In 2019 our Access Standards put us on a path to improving access to GP services and ensuring consistency across Wales. Achievement has increased year on year over the past 3 years, with 89% of practices now achieving all standards. From 1 April 2023 practices will be contractually mandated to maintain these Phase 1 standards.

We have continued to build on this approach: in April 2022, the Access Commitment introduced a second phase of standards to ensure practices take a forward-looking and planned approach to managing patient need, addressing the 8 am bottleneck we know has been an ongoing issue. As part of the commitment, the release of all appointments at 8 am, or other narrow window of time, is no longer acceptable. Patients can expect to have their needs met at first point of contact without the need to contact the practice on multiple occasions.

Where a consultation is needed, arrangements will be made for this to take place at a time in line with clinical need. This commitment aims to ensure patients who have less urgent or routine needs do not need to contact their GP practice multiple times but are instead given an appointment scheduled for an appropriate date and time, which may be in the future.

For many practices this is a significant shift in the way their systems and processes have worked to date and changes have taken time to fully embed. Practices have until 31 March 2023 to demonstrate achievement of this commitment. By this date, they will need to produce a reflective report to health boards, demonstrating how they have interrogated the data from their telephone systems, evidenced call demand comparisons and the improvements they have made to reflect the access needs of their patients.