£1bn cost of waiting to see a GP

Business leaders are to deliver a tough warning to the government that employees are spending millions of hours a year sitting in doctors' waiting rooms during office hours because of the lack of weekend GP clinics.

Three and a half million working days were lost last year because employees had to see a doctor during working hours, according to the Confederation of British Industry. This was more than four times the number of days lost to industrial action in 2006.

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In an unprecedented move, the CBI is writing to Health Secretary Alan Johnson asking him to give urgent consideration to opening doctors' surgeries on Saturdays and Sundays instead of making it a weekday-only service.

The CBI, which is preparing a report that will call for a shake-up of GP services, estimates that the total cost to the economy is around £1bn a year, based on the fact that people visit their GP an average of three times a year and that the average hourly pay rate is just under £11.

The warning from business leaders will strengthen Gordon Brown's determination to make faster access to family doctors a priority for the health service, amid growing public unhappiness at the time spent in waiting rooms. It comes as new figures were released last week showing that in the first year of the new pay deal, 2004-05, some family doctors started to earn as much as £250,000 a year and that almost half of GPs in Britain earned £100,000 a year or more.


http://observer.guardian.co.uk/politics/story/0,,2132065,00.html

I can only wonder what it is like in the US...

I said weekend, but I neerd to add AFTER 6PM on week days too!