GP waiting times throughout the UK have seen a massive rise since before the beginning of Covid.

Medical burnout and the rising number of redundancies has caused the GPs that are left to have an over-subscription of patients and not enough time to see them all in person.

The GP practices in east Berkshire, where patients are most likely to wait longer than two weeks for an appointment have been revealed in new figures.

The Government said the new data published by NHS Digital – which gives detailed information 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".

A total of 398,804 appointments took place at GP practices in the former NHS Frimley CCG area in October.

At least 60,694 (15%) of these had taken place more than a fortnight after being booked, and of those, 14,037 (4%) saw patients wait longer than 28 days.

We looked at all the GP surgeries across the Frimley Trust areas and found that three of the top 10 worst surgeries for GP waiting times are in East Berkshire.

These practices have the highest proportion of appointments occurring after a fortnight.

Lightwater Surgery

This surgery which is located just miles from Ascot is located in All Saints Road in Lightwater.

New data has found that out of 7,235 appointments 34.2% of them took over a fortnight to schedule.

The Sandhurst Group Practice 

According to the most recent data by the NHS, 31.3% of appointments were attended two weeks after they were booked.

There were 6,822 appointments assessed in this review.

Sandhurst Practice has gained a Google rating of 2.2 stars with many complaints about their waiting times reported online.

The Symons Medical Centre

This Maidenhead Practice is considered the third surgery in East Berkshire with the worst waiting times.

Although this small surgery has the least amount of appointments (3,571), 28.6% of them were only appointed after 2 weeks.

 

NHS Digital cautioned that GP workloads can be affected by several factors such as the demographic of patients registered at the practice, how deprived the area is and the number of care homes the practice offers services to.

The new practice-level figures come as part of the Government's "plan for patients", which includes a new ambition for every patient to get an appointment at their GP practice within two weeks.

However, the RCGP said the Government should address the root cause of GP pressures – including recruitment and retention of doctors – "instead of lumbering a struggling service with new expectations".

Prof Hawthorne said GP workloads have escalated while the number of fully qualified full-time equivalent GPs has fallen by 719 across England since 2019.

"GP teams are just as frustrated as patients when they don’t have the resources and time to deliver the high standard of care to patients they want to, and in some areas where the pressures are even greater, this is happening more," she added.

Meanwhile, Rachel Power, chief executive of the Patients Association, said primary care should engage with patients and find out their priorities, such as whether face-to-face appointments are priority for them, to help the NHS improve triage and resource prioritisation.

This week, the Government set out plans to overhaul NHS pension rules in an attempt to retain more senior doctors in the service.

Launching an eight-week consultation, ministers said the proposed changes would also remove barriers to retired clinicians returning to work – including new “flexibilities” to allow retired and partially retired staff to return to work or increase their working hours without having payments to their pension reduced or suspended.

Health Secretary Steve Barclay said the proposed changes "will help open up extra appointments so patients can see their GP and consultants more quickly".