BMA union doubles down on 'misleading' claim that Northern Ireland GPs carry out '200,000 appointments per week'
Doctors’ union the BMA has been urged to correct a “misleading” claim that GPs in Northern Ireland conduct 200,000 appointments per week, despite that number being contradicted by official data.
Recent figures from Stormont’s health department show only 123,926 telephone or face to face encounters between doctors and their patients in June – but the union has defended their figures, saying they reflect “the true multidisciplinary nature of modern general practice”.
The British Medical Association (BMA) is in dispute with the Department of Health (DoH) over funding – and has used the figure to make the claim that “10% of the population [is] seeing their GP every week”.
Posters have now appeared in doctors surgeries stating: “GPs see over 200,000 patients a week. That's 10.2 million appointments every year. This is why you struggle to see your GP. General Practice in Northern Ireland needs to be properly funded”.
In August, the News Letter sought data from DoH on the claim. It showed that the figures the BMA relied on show “encounters” not appointments – and includes contacts with staff outside GPs practices, such as counsellors and pharmacists.
It also revealed that the majority of contacts between patients and GPs are carried out by telephone rather than face to face – and that patients can be counted twice on any given day if, for example, a patient telephones their GP practice and is triaged by a member of the clinical team before seeing their doctor.
Ulster Unionist health spokesperson Alan Chambers MLA said it is important that the BMA “remain factually accurate”.
“Whilst I don’t doubt for one moment that many of our GPs are under enormous pressure, it’s simply not the case to say 200,000 patients see their GP every week. Rather Department of Health figures earlier this year clearly showed weekly encounters with GPs totalled approximately 124,000, of which 55,000 were face to face”, the North Down MLA said.
He restated the health minister’s position that the BMA’s “far-reaching ask” for an additional £80m this year was undeliverable given the wider funding position, but his door remains firmly open.
TUV chairman Councillor Allister Kyle described the BMA figures as “propaganda” – saying it does “nothing to address the belief of many that GPs are simply not delivering the service they should in local communities”.
While acknowledging that the system is under pressure, he said there are questions that GPs need to answer.
“The claim that GPs deliver 200,000 appointments a week in Northern Ireland is simply misleading. The official figures show that only around 124,000 encounters each week are with GPs themselves. The larger 200,000 figure includes contacts with nurses, pharmacists, paramedics, counsellors and other practice staff many of whom are not doctors.
“It’s also important to note that a single patient can generate multiple encounters in one day — for example, a phone triage followed by a face-to-face consultation — so these numbers do not represent 200,000 unique patients being seen by GPs”, Mr Kyle said.
“It’s time the BMA clarified or corrected this figure rather than continuing to present misleading numbers to the public”, he added.
The BMA previously cited an NI Audit Office report to justify its 200,000 figure. However, that report said the DoH data was likely to include multiple contacts and non-practice clinical staff.
When asked by the News Letter about how this supported its claim of 200,000 GP appointments, a spokesperson said it is “both accurate and fair to refer to these patient interactions – whether with a GP, nurse, or another member of the team – as ‘appointments,’ as each represents a direct patient-facing service, consultation, or intervention provided through general practice”.
The BMA added that the 200,000 figure “serves to illustrate the extensive workload and reach of general practice, highlighting that roughly 10% of the population receives care or consults with a general practice team member each week. Whether that contact is with a GP or another qualified practice-based clinician, the fundamental point remains: general practice provides an essential and substantial volume of patient care, supporting the health needs of communities at a significant scale”.