Minister for Health, the Hon Samantha Sacramento, this morning visited the Primary Care Centre where she met Heads of Department and senior officials.

After her visit she said;

“I have made this the first GHA department that I have visited in order to understand its systems.

“I am delighted that last month’s backlog of repeat prescriptions is now a thing of the past and that it has been cleared by the GPs. In July, the backlog consisted of 741 phone requests for repeat prescriptions plus over 500 similar requests which had been sent by email. As of mid-August, this backlog had been completely removed, except for the turnover of about 120 requests per day which are dealt with on the basis of a 48 hour turnaround. If anyone is still waiting for a repeat prescription, I would ask them to check with the pharmacy of their choice as the medication may be waiting there for collection.

“I would also like to update the public on the subject of Primary Care Appointments. In July of last year, there were 9170 ‘patient contacts’ with a GP but in July of this year, there were 10,691 GP contacts, an increase of over 14%.

“However, I would like to apologise for the continuing delays for patients who phone to make an appointment with a GP. Please remember that all these calls now contains a set of questions regarding possible Covid-19 symptoms and therefore each call lasts much longer than it used to. On the positive side, patients should be aware that, in the past 2 weeks, the number of available face-to-face GP appointments has been increased by 20 and the MyGHA system has been re-introduced in order to make it easier to make an appointment by phone.

“I can assure the public that I will give the PCC management team all my support in order to provide the best possible service to the community"