Access to and delivery of general practice services: A study of patients at practices using digital and online tools (17 March 2022)

Summary

This briefing by The Health Foundation Improvement Analytics Unit looks at recent data around patient preferences for online and face-to-face consultations and examines the impact of the increasing use of online tools on patient access to primary care. The Improvement Analytics Unit examined 7.5 million patient-initiated requests for primary care made using the askmyGP online consultation system between March 2019 and September 2021 at 146 general practices in England. These practices had a combined total list size of 1.35 million patients.

Content

The analysis found that:

• only a minority of patient requests for care stated a preference for a face-to-face consultation – falling from 30% of requests before the pandemic to less than 4% at the start of the pandemic. While requests for face-to-face consultations did increase after that, they only accounted for 10% of requests by the end of the study period in September 2021.
• the increasing use of online consultations systems cause concern about the risk of digital tools creating inequalities by making it difficult for some patients to access care.
• digital exclusion can be overcome if GP services use a blended approach to booking and consultations.