THE GP practices in north Cumbria where patients are most likely to wait longer than two weeks for an appointment have been revealed in new figures.

The new data published by NHS Digital, which gives detailed infromation on appointments and waiting times for individual GP practices across England will help patients "make a more informed choice about the practice they choose to visit" according to the Goverment.

These new figures show that in October 2022, a total of 198,292 appointments took place at GP practices in the former NHS North Cumbria CCG area in October.

At least 29,228 (15 per cent) of these had taken more than a fortnight after being booked, and of those, 9,556 (5 per cent) saw patients wait longer than 28 days. 

In north Cumbria, the practice with the highest proportion of appointments occuring after a fortnight was Westcroft House Surgery with 35.5 per cent of its 4,153 appointments in October taking place more than two weeks after they had been booked.

On the other hand, James Street Group Practice recorded the lowest proportion, with 3.9 percent of its 18,073 appointments in October seeing patients wait longer than a fortnight. 

Commenting on this new data, a NHS Nort East and North Cumbria Integrated Care Board spokesperson said:

"Currently, GP services are very pressured, and practices are working very hard to ensure that patients get the appropriate help they need.

Due to a number of new ways of working, such as enhanced access appointments at evenings and weekends, there are now more appointments available across general practice in North Cumbria than before.

"We also know that many patients are choosing to book appointments in advance, especially for routine care which certain practices may do more of, so many of the appointments happening more than two weeks after booking can be due to patient choice.

"With regards to the practice level data recently published by NHS Digital, these are defined as experimental statistics, which means that they are in the testing phase and not yet fully developed for a number of reasons.

This means that they may not fully capture general practice activity at the moment. For example, the figures only include appointments that are recorded in the GP appointments system, rather than the totality of interactions, for example, not all online or evening and weekend appointments are included, which are likely to have been for more urgent appointments."

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