Advertisement

Doctors to spend more time with most vulnerable patients

Welsh revisions to the GP contract will free up more time for doctors to spend with the patients who most need them, Health Minister Mark Drakeford announced today.

The Welsh Government has agreed changes to the GP contract for 2014/15 with the General Practitioners Committee for Wales.

The changes we have agreed will remove the treadmill of bureaucracy facing GPs, allowing them to spend more time with their most vulnerable patients, particularly the frail elderly.

By removing some of the current requirements on GPs, we are both freeing up valuable time and putting more trust in the professional judgement of doctors, allowing them to treat their patients as individuals rather than to satisfy a set of criteria.

We are also, by changing the funding formula for practices, addressing the inequalities in health which exist between the most and least affluent areas of Wales.

– Mark Drakeford, Health Minister