David Cameron and Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt’s pledge to keep surgeries open 12 hours a day, seven days a week by 2020 is going to be ‘impossible to deliver,’ according to health professionals. Needless to say, we’d love to know what you think on the matter…

The proposed changes – intended to ease mounting pressure on out-of-hours care providers – have been met with a great deal of resistance, especially amongst medical professionals and those admin staff dealing with the increasing demand for appointment slots in doctor’s surgeries. With GP’s surgeries already stretched beyond their means, more family doctors taking early retirement than ever before and surgery closures forecast in the near future, this latest promise feels for many like a last ditch ploy for votes ahead of May.

With a 12 minute doctor’s appointment costing the NHS £36 and the average hospital admission £68, the logic behind providing more expansive primary care across the UK is crystal clear. As is the thinking behind an appointment system that allows full-time workers to use evenings and weekends to see a GP rather than creating a bottleneck of demand during the week. But are these ideals just too idealistic?

Cameron has insisted that adequate funding and extra staffing will be put towards this New Deal, and that the pilot has already worked for some 7 million patients across the UK after a £50 million budget was allocated to selected surgeries. An additional £100 million of government money has been earmarked to provide an extra 10 million people with access to a ‘named’ GP seven days a week by 2015. Another £400 million is proposed for rolling out the extended service nationally over the following five years – after the Conservative Party’s intended re-election in May. Hunt has claimed that over 5000 GPs will be trained to ‘meet the needs of a 24/7 society’ by providing weekend and evening care.  Is this enough, and is there time?

With a 16% rise in demand for GP appointments forecast by 2016, where – and how and when exactly – Cameron and Hunt will find the extra GPs required to deliver this level of care is the key question. Fears abound that much of the slack will be picked up by expensive locums, and that the promise of a named GP for all throughout the week is impossible unless all family doctors were to work illegal 84 hour weeks.