CONCERNS over patients’ access to care at GP surgeries are persisting, despite a concerted drive to extend appointment times.

While GP practices have extended their opening hours, offered extra weekend and evening services and made appointments available every day of the year, some patients are still struggling to see medics for several weeks, a Darlington Borough Council meeting has heard.

Members of the authority’s health and partnerships scrutiny committee concluded poor communication of the extended appointments system had led to patients facing unnecessary waits.

Councillors also expressed concerns about the number of patients who failed to turn up to appointments.

The authority’s Conservative group leader Councillor Heather Scott said: “Last time I rang to try to get an appointment I couldn’t get one for three weeks. I thought in three weeks time I will probably be dead or better. I wondered if people are booking appointments so far ahead, by the time it gets to the appointment they are feeling better and they are just not ringing to cancel.”

Karen Hawkins, a director of Darlington Clinical Commissioning Group, said lengthy waits should not be happening as batches of appointment slots were released every day and the available appointments were not all being booked. She added appointment times were listed on its website.

Councillor Jan Taylor said it appeared that some GP surgery receptionists were unclear about the availability of appointments. She said: “It could be that people are missing the essential care that they need.”

Ms Hawkins said the latest survey of patients experiences of GP surgeries in the town had found Darlington fared well compared to the national average in a number of different areas.

However, she said the survey showed while patients were finding it increasingly easy to get through to speak to somebody at the practices on the phone, work was ongoing to address the 31 per cent of surveyed people who said they had experienced difficulties.

The survey also found while 32 per cent of the 1,200 patients who responded felt that they waited too long to be seen at GP surgeries, the surgeries’ doctors and nurses were trusted by 96 per cent and 98 per cent of patients, respectively.