News / Careful planning needed for seven-day service

The government underlined its commitment to establishing a seven-day NHS by 2020 in the Queen’s speech on 27 May. It said seven-day opening, with improved access and better links between services, would help deliver a safer, more sustainable NHS that would save more lives. The speech also reaffirmed the pledge to increase NHS funding by £8bn by 2020.

A week earlier, David Cameron had used his first post-election speech to launch the move to seven-day services in primary and secondary care. GP practices would open longer – by the end of this financial year 18 million patients would have access to their GP during normal opening hours and in the evenings and at weekends, he said. He also said more senior hospital clinicians would be on duty in the evenings and at weekends.

‘Mortality rates for patients admitted to hospital on a Sunday can be 16% higher than on a Wednesday, while the biggest numbers of seriously ill patients arrive at the weekend when hospitals are least well equipped to handle them,’ he said. ‘We simply can’t aspire to be the safest health system in the world without this commitment.’

He added that the initiative was about different shift patterns rather than longer hours.

HFMA policy and technical director Paul Briddock said the plans were a step in the right direction. ‘These plans will cost additional money in an already stretched system, therefore any extra funds committed should be coupled with guidance on how best to implement these fundamental changes to the way the NHS works at the moment,’ he said.

‘Proposals such as seven-day services will therefore need careful financial planning. However, despite having cost implications, the benefits of increased access to primary care provision should also lead to fewer unnecessary and expensive hospital admissions in the long run.’

British Medical Association GP leader Chaand Nagpaul cast doubt on the plan. ‘Ministers must halt their surreal obsession for practices to open seven days when there aren’t the GPs to even cope with current demands. This would damage quality care by spreading GPs so thinly and will reduce GPs’ availability for older vulnerable patients.’