Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Health and Social Services – in the Senedd at 3:12 pm on 7 July 2021.
Well, thanks very much. Now, since the launch of our ‘Train. Work. Live.’ campaign, north Wales in particular has benefited from a higher number of appointments into GP training. So, last year saw 29 new trainees who were recruited to speciality training schemes in Bangor, in Dyffryn Clwyd and in Wrexham. So, I think that should demonstrate to you that, actually, there is a lot of work being done on this, specifically by Health Education and Improvement Wales.
The other issue, which you touch upon, is about access to GPs, and we did set out some standards that we announced back in March 2019, and there were a whole series of standards that GPs needed to respond to, if they were to get that enhanced payment that was due—and I have written to Members today to set out who received what and who achieved what in relation to meeting those standards. So, we do have measures and ways of trying to interact and engage, and we will be doing that in the next few weeks, with general medical services, to make sure that we can drive up access for our patients around the whole of Wales. Just to let you know that about 76 per cent of practices across Wales achieved all of the GMS in-hours access standards, and that compares to 65 per cent last year. But I'm very well aware that that suggests that 24 per cent didn't, and those are the ones we need to focus on.