6. To ask the Scottish Government what action it has taken to address patient access issues at GP practices. (S5O-03031)

The new GP contract will improve patient access to GP practices by increasing transparency on surgery times and making a wider range of healthcare professionals available to patients.

In addition, our commitment to increasing the number of GPs by 800 in the next decade will ensure that GPs can spend more time with patients who need to see them. The latest figures show that we now have a record number of GPs in Scotland—an additional 75 GPs and GP registrars. Targeted initiatives, such as the Scottish graduate entry medicine programme, an increase in undergraduate medical education places and increasing undergraduate training in primary care settings will, I believe, ensure a sustainable GP workforce in the future.

One of the welcome objectives in the new general medical services contract that the cabinet secretary mentioned is the redistribution of some of GPs’ workloads to other relevant staff. The problem is that patients do not know about it, and we have a lot of anecdotal evidence that GPs are spending quite a portion of their 10-minute appointments explaining the changes. Will the cabinet secretary outline what steps she is taking to fulfil the commitment that she has made to ensure greater patient awareness of the changes?

I would be very happy to hear from Ross Greer which particular practice areas the anecdotal evidence is coming from

, because I have information that there are many patients across different parts of Scotland who are benefiting from the additional access to other professionals. There are many ways in which we can help independent contractors—and we need to remember that they are independent contractors, through our health service—to ensure that information is available to patients and through community pharmacies and so on. I would be happy to look at the particular issues that Mr Greer has raised, to see what more we can do.