Seven-day access to primary care in the UK

The paper by Rosenberg-Wohl et al. ¹ explores extended seven-day primary care access and its place in the UK and the rest of Europe. While it is true that UK primary care manages approximately 90% of NHS patient contacts, it does not function in complete isolation from secondary care. Therefore, the political and cost emphasis on seven-day 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. GP surgery provision for acute and routine consultations should simultaneously also require ‘regular' hospital diagnostic facilities (blood tests, microbiology and radiology) to be available. Otherwise, the majority of patients who do not need hospital admission, but do need further investigation, will have an incomplete service which denies them the same-day service that was surely and logically conceived in this original seven-day initiative. Anything less would resemble some second-rate NHS sop that, like so many other ‘fixes', has failed to stand the test of time.

Finally, there is the challenging question as to who will staff these extra extended hours, given the present NHS workforce crisis and the current lack of popularity in general practice as a career choice. While many surgeries have employed excellent paramedics etc., just to survive and meet patient demands, the ideal person is surely a trained general practitioner.