The Member of Parliament for Mansfield, Ben Bradley, has this morning welcomed the government’s New Plan for Patients. This plan builds on the NHS Winter Plan and is part of a new drive to improve access to NHS services and put our health and social care services on a resilient footing.
The Plan for Patients prioritises the services that matter most to people - ambulances, backlogs, care and doctors and dentists. Critically, the plan also improves access to GP practices so that all patients who need one can be seen by a GP within two weeks, and patients with the most urgent needs on the same day.
In order to implement this plan changes are being made to the funding rules, allowing GP practices to recruit extra support staff. This will help allow GP’s to focus on treating patients and is estimated to free up over one million appointments per year.
Under this new plan the public will have access to more information on how their local NHS services are doing. This includes appointments data which will be published at a practice level for the first time ever. Measures such as this are crucial for accountability of local services and to help patients make more informed choices about their healthcare.
Ben Bradley MP was quoted as saying:
‘Access to local healthcare services is one of the top reasons constituents get in touch with my office and I know how important it is that we make NHS services more accessible to people, particularly GP practices. As such, I really welcome this New Plan for Patients that places the public right at the heart of healthcare provision.’
‘From my visits to local GP practices I have seen just how busy they are and have been feeding back to government the need for further support. I am pleased to see this support realised in the changing of funding rules meaning more support staff can be hired and GP’s can focus on their appointments.’
‘This plan doesn’t just focus on general practice however and also helps to create more capacity for patient services in crucial services such as our ambulances and dentistry’s.’
‘Everyone knows this winter will be tough for our NHS, but I am pleased to see government is taking take action now to help patients get the care they need. I am further assured that this is just the first step in the government’s work to bolster our NHS and social care services, so that patients always get the care they need.’
