British GP appointments 'have the shortest consultation time in Europe'

The average length of an appointment with a GP in the UK has been found to be 10 minutes – thought to be the shortest consultation time in Europe.

The findings, coupled with proposals to push more care out of hospitals and into local surgeries, have left GPs warning that care could suffer.

The proposals are part of a plan to “modernise” the NHS and make it more efficient.

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The Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) and British Medical Association (BMA) have both expressed concern over consultation lengths under these new plans.

They say the proposals are likely to result in GPs handling more complex cases (particularly in the case of the elderly) which are impossible to resolve in a ten minute consultation.

In the past five years, the number of appointments carried out by GPs in the UK rose by nearly a quarter. Although funding is increasing (by 14% by 2020), this won’t be in place by the time the new care plans are rolled out later this year.

RCGP president Dr Helen Stokes-Lampard told the BBC, “We have the shortest consultations in Europe. It is a crazy situation.

“They want to push more care out of hospitals, but we do not have the resources or infrastructure in the community to cope.

“We will need to provide more complex care. That takes time – longer than the 10 minutes we get now. I really worry what will happen.

“The typical patient has a range of multiple conditions. They can have diabetes and heart disease and some moderate depression. Patients can be on 10 medicines. You can’t possibly provide good care in 10 minutes to these sort of patients.

“If we had longer, you could do so much more to reduce hospital admissions and repeat attendances.”

Dr Chaand Nagpaul, of the BMA, agreed, adding, “We spend less than other European countries. We have fewer doctors than other European nations.

“We have one third of the hospital beds per head compared to Germany for example, GPs spend less time per patient than any other European nations.

“We need to be addressing these issues as a priority.”