Written question WQ94357

As previously confirmed in WQ93719, the key principle of the Primary Care Model for Wales is to ensure patients can access appropriate and timely care as close to home as possible.

As is the case across the UK, some practices have made decisions to merge to serve a larger area and support larger patient numbers. Through the Primary Care Model, people access an increasingly wide range of professionals and services in their community to support them to stay well, and provide advice and support where urgent care needs arise.

These services come together as a multi professional team through the clusters to provide a more coordinated and seamless experience for people and to make effective use of the time and different skills and expertise of those providing those services.

To support access to care for patients more generally, pharmacies have helped to create additional capacity for GPs by delivering over 600,000 consultations across Wales. These include services likes the common ailments scheme and emergency prescription service.

The GP speciality training programme has been significantly expanded over the past few years, supported by the Train Work Live marketing campaign and associated financial incentives scheme. The current recruitment target of 160 new GP trainees each year is consistently being achieved. A total of 199 new GP trainees were recruited in 2023.

The funding agreed in the Education and Training Plan for 2024/25 includes £37.603m to support core GP training numbers.