Coventry and Warwickshire saw a 19% rise in four-week waits for GP appointments last year when compared to 2022, House of Commons Library research commissioned by the Liberal Democrats has revealed.
The NHS data measures the time between when the appointment was booked and when it took place. It showed that the number of appointments that saw patients wait two weeks or longer in Coventry and Warwickshire has spiked by 12% to 659,690 in 2023, up from 587,794 the previous year.
It means the proportion of appointments where a patient waited two weeks or longer in Coventry and Warwickshire has risen to 11.8%, up from 10.9% in 2022.
Kenilworth & Southam’s Liberal Democrats have criticised the Conservative government for letting the community down with their neglect of local health services.
The Liberal Democrats are calling for a legal right to get a GP appointment within seven days, or 24 hours if in urgent need.
The policy would enshrine this right in the NHS Constitution, putting a duty on the government and health service to make sure it happens. It would be achieved by increasing the number of GPs, and increasing the number of nurses and pharmacists fully qualified to prescribe day to day medicines.
Commenting, Jenny Wilkinson, Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Candidate for Kenilworth & Southam said:
Jenny Wilkinson, Parliamentary Candidate for Kenilworth & Southam, looks at the state of Dentistry now. More than 60% of areas in England have seen a rise in the number of people per dentist since 2019.
