6. Will the Cabinet Secretary outline what the Welsh Government is doing to improve access to GP services? OAQ(5)0145(HWS)

We’re pleased that the overall figures show access is improving, but recognise there is still more to be done, including scaling up new ways of accessing services, and we’re working with the General Practitioners Committee Wales and health boards on new initiatives to improve access to integrated, GP-led multi-professional services.

Thank you for that answer, but I wonder if you are intending to—or are working with the Older People’s Commissioner for Wales? Because, of course, you recently published a report that was entitled ‘GP Services in Wales: The Perspective of Older People’, and it highlighted that far too many of the older population find making an appointment challenging, find the GP service inflexible and unresponsive to their individual needs and circumstances, don’t recognise the difficulties they have in accessing or being IT literate, or using information technology communication methods. So, I just wonder what you and your Government are doing to ensure that older people do not feel that the one place that they should really be able to access with ease is actually being slowly walled off from them.

I recognise the challenge, and, of course, it’s not just older people who occasionally have difficulties accessing primary care. The great majority of people don’t, but, if you’re in an area where it is a challenge, it doesn’t really help you that you get told that, somewhere else in Wales, access is much easier. On the specifics of the older person’s commissioner’s report, I’ve already written to health boards highlighting the recommendations and indicating that I expect them to respond to them. Because, in the new ways of working that are being developed, there is always a need for professionals running and delivering the service to discuss those with their patients, so they understand what they can expect and about how to make best use of any change in the system. Because I do recognise this is an area where improvement is needed, and that’s part of our conversations with the BMA through GPC Wales.

Surely, Cabinet Secretary, one of the other ways of improving access to GPs is to reduce unnecessary burdens, and I’ve seen first hand the tremendous work of community pharmacists in my own constituency dealing with, for example, minor ailments. So, I wonder what hope he holds out that the Choose Pharmacy platform, where patients can, with some knowledge, actually access community pharmacies to deal with those things that will take some of the load away from GPs—so that GPs are freed up then to deal with very much the type of patients that Angela Burns has just been referring to.

I’m generally optimistic about the ability of community pharmacy to play a larger role, as well as the pharmacists that clusters are employing themselves to help with access in their own individual areas. You’ll be aware that we invested £750,000 in introducing and delivering the community pharmacy IT platform across Wales. The roll-out is progressing, and I’m happy to say we remain absolutely on track for over half of pharmacies in Wales, by the end of March next year, to be able to deliver the Choose Pharmacy platform. That will mean the ability to go to a local pharmacy to undertake the minor ailments scheme is significantly improved. It should also mean demand is much more appropriately managed, so that people who really do need to see a GP have a better prospect of seeing them, but also the GP should then have more time to see those patients as well.

On the back of that question, of course, naturally, we still have to have GPs to deal with those problems that only a doctor can deal with. And this week we’ve heard that the Coelbren surgery in my region is going to close because the Abertawe Bro Morgannwg health board has failed to find general practitioners to work there, even though they’ve been trying for some months to do that. In light of that, what are you, as a Government, going to do to find a solution to this problem?

It’s a regular cause of comment and discussion with the profession and with partners around it. Of course, I was recently at the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee’s inquiry, giving evidence about doctor recruitment. I’m looking forward to providing figures on filling our training places for GPs in the next few weeks, and I do think that the ‘Train. Work. Live’ campaign has had a really positive impact. We’ll also know more about that—not just about the social media profile it’s had, but actually with actually filling those places as well. But there will always be a challenge in actually remodelling primary care and understanding, where those centres currently are now, should they still be the places where we recruit and deliver the service to in the future, So, it is part of that wider conversation on reshaping and reforming primary care.

I’ll say it again: the conversations we have with the British Medical Association, with the Royal College of General Practitioners, but other professionals as well, are really important in doing that. This isn’t a process of imposition. It’s a process of conversation, partnership and learning on what already works. That’s why the visit that I had to the Neath Pacesetter with both Jeremy Miles and David Rees was particularly important to see how some GPs are already living up to and changing the way they deliver care, with a wider range of care being available. Actually, for GPs themselves, they think it’s a better way for them to work and a better way for their patients to access the service.