Setting the GP Record Straight
Face to face appointments will always be an essential part of general practice, but good and safe care can also be delivered remotely.
The situation in general practice is unsustainable. Demands on GPs are higher than ever; the number of healthcare staff is falling, the population is rising, there’s a backlog caused by the pandemic, and general practice is playing a major role in administering COVID-19 vaccinations and boosters.
Having spent time shadowing general practice staff, we’ve seen the pressures they’re facing first hand and the enormous impact it’s having on them. The phones ring non-stop, piles of letters need to be opened and coded, inbound messages come from different sources, and all the while, staff are working hard to continue caring for patients and book thousands of people into vaccine clinics at short notice.
We need to recognise the importance of primary care, focusing on improving staff wellbeing, increasing the number of GPs and redefining valuable primary care.
Innovation in general practice
We’ve all had to quickly adapt to living through a pandemic, and so did those who care for us. Change in general practice has been enacted far quicker than any of us could have anticipated and we’ve seen general practice innovate, rapidly re-shaping how they work, from consulting with patients, working remotely, emergency cover and communicating in new ways.
accuRx users have enabled products like video consultation, patient triage, asynchronous SMS and batch messaging to communicate with patients and cut down on manual admin tasks. They estimate that using these products cuts around 2–3 hours of admin time per staff member a week, freeing up about 15 appointments each week that can be used to see other patients.
The facts
In fact, more patients are being seen than ever before and the longest wait times for appointments have significantly dropped:
- 30% increase in the number of appointments since 2019
- 31.1 million appointments took place in June 2021 alone
- On average, 46% of GP appointments take place on they day they’re booked
- Only 16% of patients report waiting a week or longer for an appointment, compared to 25% in 2019
This suggests that, despite there being a lower number of GPs per patient, they’re actually seeing more patients than before the pandemic began, and patients are mostly able to get a same day appointment when they have an urgent need.
Personalised Care
As a society, we should reflect carefully on what we’ve learned over the last 18 months and build on this, rather than revert back to what we knew before.
Action is needed to increase the number of people working in healthcare and improve the technology the whole system has access to, to:
- Make healthcare teams’ lives easier.
- Connect everyone involved in a patient’s care.
- Free up more time for face to face appointments for those who need them.
Instead of turning the clocks back to run a one-size-fits-all model of 10 minute face to face appointments for every need, we should seek to understand and achieve valuable contact in primary care.
This means empowering patients and practice staff to choose what method of care is most appropriate. Only then can we make sure that everyone has access to personalised care.
