Patients “will be harmed” if they are forced to wait up to a month to see their GP, a top doctor has warned last night.
Dr Maureen Baker spoke out after a report said that Tory cuts would reduce funding to surgeries by £1.5billion, in real terms, by 2017.
The document – leaked to the Mirror before its release – also warned the growing and ageing population meant the number of appointments needed would rocket by 69 million a year to 409 million.
Experts fear the resulting backlog means patients with “sleeping killers”, such as cancer or lung disease, will give up on seeing their GP – only to be diagnosed when it is too late.
Dr Baker, head of the Royal College of GPs, said: “This is extremely worrying as it will mean we can’t prevent things or pick up diseases at an early stage and patients will be harmed.
“Investment in general practice has already been cut to the bone and these projections show by the middle of the next Parliament, general practice will be teetering on the brink.
"If general practice is run on a shoestring, waiting lists will inevitably get even longer and standards of care will fall.”
Doctors want Tory Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt to boost their share of NHS cash to help cut waiting times in surgeries and offer more flexible opening hours.
Yet a report by consultancy firm Deloitte warns funding for general practice will fall by 17% by 2017.
It added family doctors were “under considerable strain, with insufficient capacity to meet current and expected patient needs”.
A senior NHS source said: “The number of patients waiting up to four weeks for a consultation will increase significantly if the funding problem is not addressed.
“There is a real concern that patients may quite simply give up after failing to book time with their doctor.
“The danger is that they will develop sleeping killers and only discover they are seriously ill when they are admitted to hospital. It may then be too late.”
A separate study by over-50s group Saga found 500,000 people had already suffered a delay of up to four weeks the last time they booked a GP appointment.
Only one in three managed to secure a same-day appointment – despite a Government pledge to make such slots routinely available.
Dr Baker said: “Patients should be able to get an appointment with their GP when they need one - and GPs and practice nurses should be able to concentrate on the person in front of them instead of worrying about the queues building up in the waiting room.”
She added: “General practice is the cornerstone of the NHS and we cannot sit back and allow it to wither on the vine, as if it were to collapse, the rest of the NHS would follow close behind.”
Last night, the Department of Health claimed it was increasing funding for GPs but did not deny family doctors would face the 17% cut in real terms.
A spokesman said: “We recognise GPs are hard-pressed.
“As part of ambitious changes to the GP contract, we will free them up from unnecessary red tape to devote more time to patients and have agreed a £3.8billion Better Care Fund to join up health and social care.”