Patients face up to five-year waits for some mental health services, GP claims

A GP has told how some patients can face waiting lists of four to five years for mental health treatment as he complained funding for such services had been “cut and cut and cut”.

Dr Gavin Francis said that he referred a female patient for an urgent mental assessment as she was suicidal, only to be told there was “no capacity” to see her.

He spoke out about the problems in the NHS, saying that “things have started to crack down and break down left, right and centre”.

He has now written a book called Free For All: Why The NHS Is Worth Saving, with Dr Francis describing it as being his “modest contribution to what is now a really white-hot national debate about the future of public services”.

Speaking at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, he described being a GP as being “extraordinarily varied” and a “very rewarding job”, but he also said it was “quite an exhausting job”.

He told how the Covid pandemic had “transformed” the way GPs operate, saying the “need to try to protect the most vulnerable and try to avoid people coming through surgeries, and that changed medicine more than it had changed in the previous century”.

Dr Francis said: “Also what I have really noticed over the last five, six years, since 2016, 2017, is it getting harder and harder to get patients through a failing system as the system gets more and more pressured.”

He complained about the “inadequate” level of resources going into the NHS, compared to the expectations of both the public and politicians.

Dr Francis, who works as a GP in Edinburgh and the Highlands, said: “When I started as a GP in 2005, a lot of my job was spent putting into practice what I had learned at medical school. This person has got this problem, I can refer them here or I can deal with this myself.

“But a lot of my job is now taken up with how do I get this person seen, because the waiting list is now 57 weeks to see a specialist.

“How can I address the mistakes that were made in hospital because the system there is breaking down. Everything is starting to break down.

“So, much, much more of my job is now spent just helping my patients as best I can through a system that is cracking and falling apart in some places.”

He said there was a “recruitment crisis in the NHS” as he told how the “system has got more and more stressed”.

With NHS funding “unable to keep up with demand”, he added that “mental health is always the one that gets hammered the most”.

Dr Francis said: “There’s some sub sections of the mental health service here in Edinburgh that now have a four or five year waiting list to be seen.”

Contrasting mental health care with cancer treatment he added: “I don’t know why health managers believe that is the place you can cut the most.

“Oncology services have traditionally been very well protected, which is good, so very few people seek private chemotherapy if they develop cancer because NHS services for oncology have always been very, very good and are maintained.

“But mental health just gets cut and cut and cut.

“I referred a patient urgently for mental health assessment for suicidal and I was told they had no capacity to see her, and that I would have to follow up myself.

“If I did that with a breast cancer referral it would be front page news. That’s what keeps happening with mental health.”

He explained he had written his latest book because he was “trying to tell the public” about the “state of public services”, saying this would help them “make an informed decision at the ballot box”.

He added he could not have written the book if he had been working as a hospital consultant.

Dr Francis said: “If I was a hospital consultant I couldn’t have written this book because hospital consultants have NHS contracts with their boards and anything like this has to go through their press team. As a GP, I am in a very different position.”