GPs lose half an hour every day battling ‘clunky’ IT
GPs waste half an hour every day navigating “clunky” IT systems that mean patients’ details get lost or bounced around between doctors, a survey suggests.
The Royal College of General Practitioners said the NHS lost the equivalent of £410 per GP per day because doctors had to spend time on “avoidable” bureaucracy instead of seeing patients.
Overall, GPs said they spent a quarter of their working hours on administrative tasks such as issuing sick notes or chasing information from other parts of the NHS.
One of the biggest frustrations, according to the survey of more than 2,000 GPs, was the “inefficient” IT systems used for referring patients to hospital specialists for further tests. The college highlighted the loss of patient details and family doctors having to pick up the pieces.
The report said: “The majority of GP participants reported spending 25-30 minutes per day completing tasks relating to a referral or follow-up activities, including manual data entry, re-issuing prescriptions and re-sending referrals, including those which had been lost, bounced back or rejected because of inconsistent and ‘clunky’ pathways.”
GPs described having to act as a “safety net” for the rest of the NHS, dealing with follow-up work from the rest of the system and other “pointless” tasks creating a “hidden workload”.
Read full story (paywalled)
Source: The Times, 29 April 2026