Don’t blame GPs for patients going to A&E with coughs and other minor ailments

‘It is time the public stopped blaming the government, lack of funding or the medical staff and took a long hard look in the mirror.’ Photograph: Martin Prescott/Getty Images

GPs are not to blame for A&E attendances (Huge rise in number of people in England’s A&Es for coughs or hiccups, 31 December).

‪England’s general practice meets unsustainable pressures with record productivity: 250,000 additional GP practice appointments are being delivered a day compared with 2019. It is the fall in the number of inpatient beds gumming up the A&E system, not a fall in GPs’ capacity to treat patients.