What discussions has the Minister had with Cwm Taf Morgannwg University Health Board regarding difficulties over the process for booking appointments at Forest View Medical Centre?
I have not had any discussions with Cwm Taf Morgannwg University Health Board about this issue. Health boards are responsible for the delivery of services to their local population and where services are provided by independent contractors, such as GPs, for managing the contracts they hold to ensure service delivery meets the reasonable needs of the local population.
This responsibility is underscored by the GMS Access Commitment, launched in April 2022. This introduced a second phase of standards to ensure practices take a forward-looking and planned approach to managing patient need. As part of the commitment, the release of all appointments at 8am, or other narrow window of time, is no longer acceptable. People can expect to have their needs met at first point of contact without the need to contact the practice on multiple occasions.
Where a consultation is needed, arrangements will be made for this to take place at a time in line with clinical need. This commitment aims to ensure people who have less urgent or routine needs do not need to contact their GP practice multiple times but are instead given an appointment scheduled for an appropriate date and time, which may be in the future.
For many practices this is a significant shift in the way their systems and processes have worked to date and changes have taken time to fully embed. Practices have until 31 March 2023 to demonstrate achievement of this commitment. By this date, they will need to produce a reflective report to health boards, demonstrating how they have interrogated the data from their telephone systems, evidenced call demand comparisons and the improvements they have made to reflect the access needs of their local patient population.