With the health secretary’s speech at the Labour conference looming, the GP Committee in England (GPC England) has given Wes Streeting two days to avoid a dispute on changes to the GP appointment booking system.

Beginning on Wednesday 1 October, patients will be able to make unlimited online consultation requests from 8am to 6.30pm, Monday to Friday, regardless of urgency. Sounds great, right? Scrambling to dial the doctors at 8am isn’t exactly an efficient system.

Sounds great, right up until you realise that Streeting has completely ignored the plan to cope with the massive increase in demand.

Streeting: ‘promises broken’

Back in February, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and NHS England agreed to a provisional contract on the booking systems changes. This contract stated that “necessary safeguards” would be in place before 1 October 2025 to “avoid urgent clinical requests being erroneously submitted online”.

However, as things currently stand, those crucial safety measures aren’t in place. The online system can’t currently distinguish between urgent and non-urgent appointments. Despite the fact that practices are already understaffed, valuable time will now need to be diverted away from patient care towards wading through the barrage of new requests to make sure that nothing urgent has been overlooked.

As such, the GPC – part of the wider British Medical Association (BMA) – issued their 48hr ultimatum on Monday 29 September. They’re asking that Streeting’s department follows through on its promise to put desperately needed safeguards in place before implementing the new booking system.

Dr Katie Bramall, GP committee chair for the BMA, said:

We agreed to these changes on the condition that ‘necessary safeguards’ would be put in place before Wednesday 1st October. This was agreed – in writing – with Government, DHSC, and NHSE in February this year. Now almost eight months later, it is deeply disappointing to see promises broken. We have worked incredibly hard to rebuild the trust between our exhausted profession and the Government, but now what are England’s GPs and practice teams supposed to think?

The Secretary of State knows that when these changes come into effect it will likely lead to the creation of hospital-style waiting lists in general practice, reduce face-to-face GP appointments – as we’ll be triaging a barrage of online requests, consequently putting patients at risk of harm as we try to find the urgent cases among the huge pile of unmet patient need that’s out there.

Mr Streeting needs to listen to us and understand how we believe GPs can deliver his ambitions safely. General practice is the leader in NHS tech innovation, we do everything online from systems to prescriptions, referrals and appointments. We’re not resistant to change, but we will be when the safety of patients and practice staff is at risk. The Government has 48 hours to change course, avoid this dispute, and keep to their promises.

Division tactics

Unfortunately, some within the mainstream media are already running the Streeting’s line of attack for him. The Express titled its article:

Wes Streeting rages at ‘absurdity’ of how it is easier to book a haircut than see a GP

The Telegraph went with the breathless headline:

We’ll strike if you make it too easy to get an appointment, say GPs

The same article also quoted a spokesperson for over-sixties campaign group Silver Voices:

This is crazy – they are complaining about moves that would make life easier for patients. It sounds like they want to deter patients by making it more difficult for them and putting extra hurdles in the way.

They need to make it as easy as possible for those who can book online rather than making everyone phone or go to the reception to make an appointment.

I think people will see this as lazy – this dispute will make it harder for patients when it is hard enough already.

By Alex/Rose Cocker

This post was originally published on Canary.