In a widely reported impending announcement David Cameron is allegedly to pledge £50m to fund 1000 GP surgeries (roughly 1 in 8) to open 0800-2000, 7 days a week. See for instance here.

Yes, these extended GP hours are something we, the patients, are asking for. And there is a need because currently there are people (just how many is really debatable) who can’t (for lots of reasons) go a GP appointment but unnecessarily clog up A&E.
But yet again the UK government has proved it doesn’t have a clue about how to actually run the NHS. Cameron doesn’t stand a hope in hell of achieving what he’s pledging, because $50m by my reckoning will pay for a quarter of that for just one year.
Here’s why …
Opening 8-20, 7 days will mean around an extra 34-40 hours a week to be covered. (It’s 34 hours if the practice is currently open 0800-1800, 5 days a week; and many aren’t.)
This means every GP practice which is going to extend their hours, as demanded will need to employ at least one extra full time equivalent GP.
And to cover the extra hours they will also need at least one full time extra member of reception/office staff.
Leaving aside where they are going to find all the suitable, spare GPs, let’s look at the cost. Here’s a very broad brush, back-of-envelope, estimate:
Assume that a GP costs the NHS £150K pa (that’s salary plus pension contributions, plus employers NI contributions, plus other benefits like holiday etc.).
Assume similarly that a full time trained receptionist costs £30K pa (again salary plus benefits package). (Yes you do need trained receptionists; medical work is not something anyone off the street can do, and certainly not safely.)
And then remember that the extra hours will also incur costs for heat, light, hot water and other services — let’s assume that’s £25 per week per practice.
Which means each practice would need funding of around £181K a year.
Dividing that into £50M would provide enough funding for around 275 practices, or about a quarter of what is proposed. And 275 practices is little more than 1 for each NHS area (CCG) in the country (by my count there are 211 of them in England).
So even if the “reorganisation” also provides 100% efficiency savings (which would be a world first!) that still means we’ll achieve only 50% of Cameron’s pledge.
So not only will Joe/Josette Public not realise that this may mean his/her GP isn’t open (and they have to go several miles across the borough to find the practice which is open — on a Sunday when there are no buses), but it is going to go nowhere near meeting Cameron’s pledge.
And that’s without all the fancy gizmos, like Skype video consultations, which are being promised. They have to be paid for too!
Oh and if you read the articles don’t be deceived by all the twaddle about the over 75s. That’s been in the plan for a long time; it isn’t new. Just as I suspect the £50m isn’t new money either.
How do we get these people to understand that healthcare is expensive, that the available funds are being misallocated and mismanaged, and that GP services are hugely underfunded compared with 10 years ago? Because they really don’t have a clue how to fix things.