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Julian Sturdy - Strong Voice for York Outer

Julian Sturdy

Member of Parliament for York Outer

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Julian joins Lobular Moon Shot Project

Julian joins Lobular Moon Shot Project

Julian has joined over one-hundred Members of Parliament backing the Lobular Moon Shot Project to improve research funding into lobular breast cancer. Invasive Lobular Breast Cancer (ILC) is the 2nd most common type of breast cancer. 3.75 million people will be diagnosed with this cancer in the next 10 years, yet ILC currently has no specific treatment and behaves

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Julian marked World Cancer Day at a special Cancer Research UK event at Westminster...

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Julian joined 56 other Members of Parliament in penning a letter to the Chief...

York Press article – Ensuring access to GP appointments

May 19, 2021

While York’s GPs have done an amazing job arranging vaccination, and continuing to attend to residents throughout the pandemic, it is clear that a number of people have found it hard to access local medical attention.

Having already raised the matter with the leadership of Vale of York NHS CCG, the local umbrella body for GP practices, in February following feedback from a concerned elderly resident, I have now tabled parliamentary questions to the Health Secretary pressing him on the impact of emergency covid triage arrangements on access to face-to-face GP appointments across the city. I have also lobbied the leadership of Vale of York NHS again in response to recent concern.

Thankfully, NHS England have last Thursday clarified the situation, with a revised standard operating procedure reiterating that practices should offer face-to-face appointments, which I hope will reassure York residents on this point. However, it is important to be clear that GPs have offered conventional in-person appointments throughout the pandemic when judged necessary, with half of consultations now face-to-face, down from 70% pre-covid.

As these figures suggest, telephone and online appointments were already an important feature of GP care before the pandemic, and it is valuable for our health service to be able to draw on this technology to support those with busy working lives, and maximise the number of patients that can be seen.

Covid, and the need for strict infection control procedures such as waiting room closures, disinfection of consulting rooms after each appointment, and regular changes in protective equipment by practice staff, reduced the number of consultation slots while also making it essential to minimise the risk of transmission by seeing patients remotely wherever possible, hence the extension of telephone and online services to be the resident’s first ‘point of contact’, after which a physical appointment could be scheduled when needed.

However, this system was not intended to prevent those requiring normal appointments from receiving them, and it should be a cause for serious concern and a rethink if this has been the case. Understandably, we won’t hear from the many residents who have appreciated a convenient and prompt telephone or online consultation, but recent alarm suggests the emergency procedures have not always been effective in ensuring everyone has received a service matching their medical requirements.

Fundamentally, we need to strike the right balance between allowing GPs to use new methods to reach people wherever appropriate, and maintaining a universal service that does not exclude older or less tech-confident residents.

The government must also progress rapidly on its commitment to recruit 6,000 new GPs, given the overall context of rocketing demand for GP services, with our ageing, longer-lived population meaning there are larger numbers of people with serious health needs than ever before. To meet this, Ministers are injecting nearly £1 billion more per year into the core GP contract, as part of an overall increase of £33.9 billion in the annual NHS budget.