Your analogy is flawed though. Tesco increase revenue when they open so being openon Sunday is worth it to them. However I agree that it's nonsense that I can't get an appointment at my GP on a Saturday. I often spend Mon-Fri away from home so have to take a day off if I need to see a doctor.
But the problem is that if a resource works at a weekend, they won't be available during a weekday. We could have a seven day service but we'd need about 30% more resources.
I don't accept that mate, on many levels.
First, do Tesco sell more food by being open 7 days instead of 5? A bit, perhaps, but not much. People don't eat more just because they can shop 7 days instead of 5 and since Tesco's competitors are open as well, it's not as if Tesco steal market share by being open longer, either. In principle, Tesco just sell the same as they did before, but the sales are spread out over the full week instead of being concentrated into 5 days. All we've seen is a shift in buying patterns, not huge increases in sales volume.
The analogy holds well with the NHS. Being available 7 days does not mean more medical work. People aren't Ill more, in fact they are probably less ill if you treat them promptly. A treatment given on Sunday need not be given again on Monday. So instead of needing 7 doctors, 5 days a week, the surgery might need 5 doctors, 7 days a week. At the hospital, the MRI scan done on the Sunday doesn't need doing again on Tuesday.
In principle, the only extra resources needed are support staff and utilities, because the medical workload is unchanged. Of course I oversimplify everything here and I do accept that in reality, some more resources are needed, but nothing like the scaremongering figures we've heard banded about.
We'd need to be sensible about it - requiring a sole GP practice to be open 24x7 would require a huge increase in resources and GPs sitting around doing nothing for hours, waiting for patients. So that wouldn't be sensible and we'd have exemptions for those sorts of circumstances. We'd implement the changes pragmatically and only where a critical mass exists to make it work efficiently.
But I keep hearing this "but it would need a +40% increase in resources" argument (I realise you said 30%), and I don't believe it for one moment. It's a myth put about by the turkey doctors who don't want to vote for the Sunday-opening Christmas. Basically, it's a convenient lie. (As is the convenient lie about impacting upon patient safety.) They are grossly over-exaggerated the additional resources needed and completely ignored the efficiency *savings" that would accrue! For example, if you are and well enough to go home on a Friday afternoon, as it stands, they can't discharge you until Monday.
The objections put up by the doctors have got less to do with real financial and medical concerns and more to do with them not wanting to work weekends and worrying about loss of overtime when they do.
