Senedd launches inquiry into the future of general practice in Wales

GPs not seeing patients, it varies between practices, GPs will tell you...perhaps they can let us in on their problem with Bronglais and the magic carpet to the medical wonders of South Wales...

Time to nationalise primary care. Couldn't GP surgeries be merged with community hubs?

None of this addresses the root cause of the problem. Our NHS is currently top heavy, whether those are extremely well paid surgeons, or administrative managers but we also demand too much of staff. We've long been under the mistaken impression that as long as we pay a little more, we can overload the staff with yet more work and we've grown far too complacent with using agency workers. Cut these costs, start with Agency workers. Agency workers should be employed for no more than 5 years at a time and a plan must be in place to put a proper trained nurse in the role, if that means the hospital has to provide scholarships, then this is what will have to be done. People underestimate wildly how much it is currently costing the average medical student to become a nurse or doctor. In all honesty, due to the crisis we have, the government should be providing fully paid (aka free) medical tuition to UK citizens who want to become nurses/doctors. Cut reliance on 'consultants' I don't mean the doctors, I mean the people often brought in to advise on various matters. These are often also paid absurd sums of money. Either cut the money they are offered or cut them out. There should be a hard limit per job of what a consultant should be able to charge and the NHS should not pay above it. Take a look at administration, there is a lot of work that needs to be done back office but the vast majority of this work should be done at somewhere between the 25k and 45k salary mark. Re-distribute and break down the work into manageable chunks, and cut the number of middle managers and yes, top brass. Check out the purchasing contracts for day to day stationery and equipment and compare this to market prices. If it is cheaper for example to purchase something from say Curry's than it is to use the internal catalogue (it often is) then make the purchase locally, and then get rid of contracts that are consistently over charging or under-delivering. Start looking at smaller providers and offer 'pilot contracts' to allow 'competition' between the suppliers. Consider Free and Open Source software, even if it has to be forked and vetted this will produce long term benefits over time (never mind cutting out wasteful commercial contracts no one actually needs to use MS Office when LibreOffice does just fine). These are just a couple of things straight off the top that will free up a lot of money, some could be done today, others will take between 5 and 10 years. This money can then be sent directly to the front line of the NHS, GP Surgeries, A&E workers and junior doctors. Will we see any of this being introduced? No, why? Because some people have their snout in the trough and are more than comfortable with the current gravy train. I'm not even talking about reducing funding in the slightest, this is hospitals and the NHS actually putting money where it will have the most impact.

They can't afford to take on more doctors. But then blame the NHS, blame the doctors working and forget how previous UK Government just kept allowing the NHS to fail.

A total joke. So convoluted to get an appointment. Difficult to get a correct diagnosis. And even more difficult to actually deal with the root cause of the problem as opposed to just masking the symptoms. Better using Google and treating yourself.

The phone charges to get an appointment are prohibitive if you have to wait 20-30 minutes in a queue. Once you get through, you need to be quite sick to get an appointment. No chance of having a general medical check-up.

I would say our GP practice in Aneurin Bevan HB must be a rare organisation, that does have multiple access platforms, phone, online, GP e mail for forwarding pictures of suspected ailments/injuries. The problem is referral to the next stage of the NHS in Wales, which seems hit and miss, rightly serious illnesses should be prioritised but again that can be variable. If it's about GP numbers then I'd rather have 200 GP's on central contract at £100k a year over 10 years than consigning the money to a money pit near Rhoose. It's about choices that Govts make.