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Found 200 results
  1. News Article
    Patients in parts of England are facing an uphill struggle to see a GP, experts say, after an analysis showed wide regional variation in doctor numbers. The Nuffield Trust think tank found Kent and Medway had the fewest GPs per person, followed by Bedfordshire, Luton and Milton Keynes. It comes as ministers have struggled to hit the pledge to boost the GP workforce by 6,000 this Parliament. But the government said it had plans in place to tackle shortages. However, Dr Billy Palmer, of the Nuffield Trust, said: "Solely boosting the number of staff nationally in the NHS is not enough alone - the next government should set a clear aim of reducing the uneven distribution of key staffing groups and shortfalls to tackle unfairness in access for patients." The think-tank report found while the government had met its target to increase the number of nurses by 50,000 this Parliament, the rises had not been felt evenly, with some specialist nurse posts, such as health visitors and learning-disability nurses, seeing numbers shrink. Dr Palmer said minimum numbers of GPs may have to be set for local areas - and better incentives to attract them to those with the fewest. Read full story Source: BBC News, 8 March 2024
  2. News Article
    Same-day access hubs will not be mandated in North West London as the Integrated Care Board (ICB) bows to pressure from GPs and patients. In a letter to GP teams, seen by Pulse, the ICB said that their controversial same-day access programme "will not form part of the single offer for enhanced services for 2024/25". Instead, ICB leaders said they want to work with PCNs "to consider how access can be improved" and that they do not have a "presumption" about a "particular model" all PCNs should adopt. They are now aiming for a new model to be implemented from April next year instead. The hub model aimed to "deliver a single point of triage for same-day, low complexity" demand for all 2.1 million residents within the integrated care system, leaving GP practices with only longer-term, "complex" care. But London GP leaders, as well as patients, raised "immense concern" with the plans, including patient safety, quality of care, and logistics. In response to these concerns, the ICB confirmed yesterday that it has "adjusted" the same-day hub programme, and that it wants to "move forward collectively" to address both patient access issues and GP pressures. Read full story Source: Pulse, 6 March 2024
  3. Content Article
    Healthwatch and national organisations representing patients and NHS leaders express concerns over Royal Mail plans to delay bulk mail of NHS appointment letters from two days to three days. 
  4. Content Article
    Continuity of care, defined as an ongoing therapeutic relationship between a patient and a physician, is a defining characteristic of primary care. However, arranging a consultation with one’s regular doctor is increasingly difficult as practices face physician shortages. Kajaria-Montag et al. studied the effect of declining care continuity on the productivity of physicians by analysing data of over 10 million consultations in 381 English primary care practices over a period of 11 years. Specifically, they examined whether a consultation with the patient’s regular doctor is more productive than with another doctor in the practice. The authors found that the time to a patient’s next visit is on average 18.1% longer when the patient sees the doctor they have seen most frequently over the past two years, while there is no operationally meaningful difference in consultation duration. The data show that the productivity benefit of care continuity is larger for older patients, patients with multiple chronic conditions, and patients with mental health conditions. The authors estimate that the total consultation demand in their sample could have fallen by up to 5.2% had all practices offered continuity of care at the level of the top decile of practices while prioritising patients expected to yield the largest productivity benefits.
  5. News Article
    Seeing the same GP improves patients’ health, reduces doctors’ workloads and could free up millions of appointments, according to the largest study of its kind. Research has previously suggested there may be benefits to seeing the same family doctor. But studies have mostly been small or covered a short period of time. Now University of Cambridge and Insead business school researchers have analysed data from 10m consultations over more than a decade in the most authoritative study on the issue yet. They found that if all GP practices moved to a model where patients saw the same doctor at each visit, it would significantly reduce doctors’ workloads while improving patient health. Multiple benefits emerged when patients had a long-term relationship with their doctor, researchers found. Seeing the same GP – known as continuity of care – meant people waited on average 18% longer between visits, compared with patients who saw different doctors. People did not take up more GP time in each consultation and the findings were particularly strong for older patients, those with multiple chronic illnesses, and people with mental health conditions. Although it will not always be possible for people to see their regular GP, researchers said the findings would translate to an estimated 5% reduction in consultations if all practices provided the level of continuity of care of the best 10% of practices. That suggests millions of appointments could be freed up. The researchers added: “Importantly, if patients receiving care from their regular doctors have longer intervals between consultations without requiring longer consultations, then continuity of care can potentially allow physicians to expand their patient list without increasing their time commitment.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 23 February 2024
  6. Content Article
    ‘Patient-initiated follow-up’ (or PIFU, for short) is not a new idea and has been referred to in different ways over time, such as open-access appointments, self-managed follow-up, and see-on-symptom appointments. However, this approach has been given renewed attention given rising waiting times and the backlog of care that built up throughout the Covid-19 pandemic.  Moving outpatient attendances to patient-initiated follow-up (PIFU) pathways is considered a key part of plans to reduce outpatient follow-ups. But what exactly is PIFU? In this Nuffield Trust explainer, Sarah Reed and Nadia Crellin describe more about what it is, the problems it could solve, and what is known so far about how well it works.
  7. News Article
    NHS England’s drive to encourage patient-initiated appointments is only having a marginal impact on reducing overall outpatient follow-ups, a major study suggests. NHS England currently has a target to have 5% of outpatients on patient-initiated follow-up pathways, and hopes this can be increased substantially in future years. The headline finding in a study by the Nuffield Trust think tank, which analysed almost 60 million cases, was that for every 5% on PIFU pathways, this roughly corresponded to 2% fewer outpatient follow-up attendances overall. It suggests PIFU implementation would need to be dramatically expanded to get anywhere close to a 25% reduction in total follow-up activity, which NHSE had previously targeted by March 2023. As previously reported, there has been little to no reduction so far. Chris Sherlaw-Johnson, senior fellow at the Nuffield Trust, said: “As few patients are currently on PIFU pathways at present, it’s not going to have that noticeable impact on the overall number of follow ups.” He also stressed it was not clear whether the reduction was caused by the genuine elimination of unnecessary follow-ups or if patients were not returning for care despite needing it. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 25 January 2024
  8. Content Article
    Millions of people use hospital services as an outpatient, with numbers of appointments rising rapidly over recent years. Patient-initiated follow-up (PIFU) is a relatively new initiative in the English NHS, and the NIHR RSET team has conducted a mixed-methods evaluation as the process develops to understand how it's working and what impact it's having on health care systems and the staff and patients involved.
  9. News Article
    One in 20 patients has to wait at least four weeks to see a GP at a time when funding for family doctor services is falling, NHS figures show. In November 2023, 1.5m appointments in England at a GP surgery took place four weeks or more after they were booked, 4.8% of the 31.9m held that month. In one in six appointments, 5.4m (17.3%), the patient was forced to wait at least two weeks after booking it to see a GP, practice nurse or other health professional. “Millions of people are being left anxious or waiting in pain because they can’t get an appointment with their GP,” said Ed Davey, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, who highlighted the latest evidence underlining the long delays that many patients face to see a GP. “Staggering” numbers of patients now have to wait a long time, he said. GP leaders blamed the situation on the widespread shortage of family doctors, which they said was making it impossible to keep up with the rising demand for appointments. Burnout due to intense workloads is prompting more GPs to work part time. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 22 January 2024
  10. News Article
    Long Covid costs the UK at least an extra £23m in GP and other primary care consultations each year, according to estimates in a new study. The University of Birmingham said extra appointments cost between £23m and £60m a year. The study examined more than 950,000 electronic healthcare records since the start of the global pandemic. People with Long Covid report symptoms including persistent coughs and brain fog. The condition is defined as having symptoms three months after the initial infection, which last for two months or more. Factors found to increase primary care costs included being older, female, white, obese or someone with long-term health conditions. Co-lead author Dr Shamil Haroon, from the university, said: "We might expect that patients who are older or who have long-term health conditions will need additional primary care support, but we have also seen additional costs associated with being white and female." Read full story Source: BBC, 11 January 2024
  11. Content Article
    The economic impact of managing Long Covid in primary care is unknown. In a study published in BMC Primary Care, Tufts et al. estimated the costs of primary care consultations associated with Long Covid and explored the relationship between risk factors and costs. The study found that costs of primary care consultations associated with Long Covid in non-hospitalised adults are substantial. Costs are significantly higher among those diagnosed with Long Covid, those with Long Covid symptoms, older adults, females, and those with obesity and comorbidities.
  12. News Article
    An alarming number of Britons are turning into “DIY doctors” because of the struggle to get an NHS GP appointment in 2023, new polling has revealed. Some 23% of those surveyed said they could not get an appointment, while three in 10 (33 per cent) said they had given up on booking one altogether, according to a Savanta poll commissioned by the Liberal Democrats. Many said they had resorted to “DIY” medical care or gone to A&E instead. One in seven (14 per cent) said they had been forced to treat themselves or ask someone else untrained to do so, with the same proportion seeking emergency care. One in five people said they had bought medication online or at a pharmacy without advice from a GP, and one in three had delayed seeing a doctor despite being in pain, as pressure on the NHS mounts. Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey described the figures as “utterly depressing” and said they should serve as an “urgent wake-up call for ministers asleep on the job”. Read full story Source: The Independent, 1 January 2024
  13. News Article
    Patients who feel fortunate to get a doctor's appointment then find they are in and out of the GP surgery in less than five minutes. A fifth of the consultations in England last year were done within that time. Dennis Reed, of the Silver Voices campaign group for over-60s, said: "It is hard enough to get a face-to-face appointment with a GP these days, without being shown the door before you have had a chance to take your coat off. "The public wants the family doctor back, who knows your family history and has the time to chat about your general health and wellbeing. "A revolving door policy, with the patient exiting after a couple of minutes clutching a prescription, is not the way to run a primary care service." Research from the House of Commons Library, commissioned by the Lib Dems, found 22% of GP appointments between January to October 2023 lasted five minutes or less. Lib Dem MP Wera Hobhouse said: "Seeing a GP is the most vital contact for people to address their health concerns, seek help and start treatment. "Not having quick and easy access to a GP and not having sufficient time for patients during an appointment leads to huge problems later on, let alone the anxiety and additional pain people suffer because of delays." Read full story Source: The Express, 31 December 2023
  14. Content Article
    Since the Covid-19 pandemic, there has been a significant increase in telehealth use for patient evaluations. The US Veteran Health Administration (VHA) has tripled phone and video visits across several specialties. Although there are hesitations in phone-call-based communication for procedural subspecialties, phone calls to veterans have proven safe and efficacious after general surgery procedures. Telehealth has additional benefits, including reducing transportation barriers, improving access to care and reducing delays in medical care. This article in the journal Surgery aimed to evaluate clinic access after the establishment of routine telehealth use through phone calls by the surgeon.
  15. News Article
    A trust is reviewing more than 100,000 patients on its outpatient lists, after concerns emerged that some had ‘been lost whilst on hold’ for follow-up appointments. A report from Buckinghamshire Healthcare Trust, leaked to HSJ, found 116,575 patient records without a scheduled follow-up after an outpatient consultation, with more than half of those left inappropriately without action, some dating back a decade. The review was triggered after staff spotted cases in which patients had been “lost whilst on hold”, the report said. The trust this week told HSJ that, since the initial discovery in the summer of last year, it had been validating the lists and reduced the number of outstanding records to 47,778. It aims to complete the reviews in the next two months. It told HSJ it had undertaken a harm review and found no “systemic harm”. Concerns have been raised over several years about the extent of overdue and unreviewed patients on follow-up lists, and the potential for them to deteriorate and come to harm. There are no national figures monitoring the patients, many of whom have long-term health needs. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 15 December 2023
  16. Content Article
    Healthcare Inspectorate Wales (HIW) is the independent inspectorate of the NHS and regulator of independent healthcare in Wales. The findings of their Annual report outline the sustained pressure on healthcare services across Wales, highlighting risks relating to emergency care, staffing concerns, poor patient flow and the accessibility of appointments. It sets out how the HIW carried out their functions across Wales, seeking assurance on the quality and safety of healthcare through a range of activities. This includes inspections and review work in the NHS, and regulatory assurance work in the independent healthcare sector. The report provides a summary of what HW's work has found, the main challenges within healthcare across Wales, and HIW's view on areas of national and local concern.
  17. Content Article
    Patient-initiated follow up (PIFU) is an appointment process that helps hospitals manage capacity and puts patients in control of making appointments, when they need them. In traditional care models, patients who have had treatment or surgery, or suffer with chronic conditions are provided with a set care plan and offered scheduled follow-up appointments either conducted in person, or remotely. PIFU offers an alternative way of organising planned follow-up care for patients following their elective procedures, rather than automatically being scheduled for appointments. This aims to give greater control to patients over the timing of their follow-up appointment based on their health status needs, helping patients save time, money and the inconvenience of travelling to pre-arranged appointments they may not need.
  18. News Article
    GP appointments over the phone or online risk harming patients, a new study published in the BMJ has found. An analysis of remote NHS doctor consultations between 2020 and 2023 found that “deaths and serious harms” had occurred because of wrong or missed diagnoses and delayed referrals. Distracted receptionists were also found to be responsible for deaths after they failed to call patients back. The report, led by the University of Oxford, suggested doctors should stop giving phone appointments to the elderly, people who are deaf, or technophobes. As many as a third of GP appointments are now virtual after face-to-face appointments slumped to less than half during the pandemic. Restoring access to face-to-face appointments has been a priority of multiple health secretaries, with Steve Barclay last year promising to name and shame GPs who did not see patients in person. Patient groups said the study was likely to be “just the tip of the iceberg” given the “potential for tragic misdiagnoses because of the limitations of online or telephone consultations”. Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Telegraph, 29 November 2023
  19. Content Article
    Triage and clinical consultations increasingly occur remotely. In this study, published in BMJ Quality & Safety, Payne et al. aimed to learn why safety incidents occur in remote encounters and how to prevent them. They found that rare safety incidents (involving death or serious harm) in remote encounters can be traced back to various clinical, communicative, technical and logistical causes. Telephone and video encounters in general practice are occurring in a high-risk (extremely busy and sometimes understaffed) context in which remote workflows may not be optimised. Front-line staff use creativity and judgement to help make care safer. As remote modalities become mainstreamed in primary care, staff should be trained in the upstream causes of safety incidents and how they can be mitigated. The subtle and creative ways in which front-line staff already contribute to safety culture should be recognised and supported.
  20. News Article
    One in 10 people attempting to contact their GP practice do not manage to get in contact, while a further 6% are only told to try again another day, according to new official survey findings commissioned by the government. The Office for National Statistics has been quietly carrying out the new regular GP access survey since the spring after ministers said they wanted to monitor the impact of their primary care recovery plan. After a sign of slight improvement in the summer, the latest survey results – for October – show no significant change since May. It also found, as did previous rounds, that of those who had tried to contact a GP practice in the past month, 10 per cent said they could not do so (see chart below, ‘Contact with GP practice’). Of those who did make contact, a further 6 per cent reported they were told to try again another day (see chart below, ‘Next step after contact’). The government and NHS England have made it a high priority in recovery plans that patients should no longer be asked to call back another day to book an appointment and should know “on the day” how their request will be managed, which may mean being advised to use a different service. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 9 November 2023
  21. Content Article
    People with chronic pain need personalised care – an approach offering patients choice and control over their mental and physical health, basing care on what matters to them personally, and focusing on individual strengths and needs. People in this position need someone to listen and acknowledge that these symptoms are real, not all in their head. They need someone to explain their chronic pain and other symptoms, but also someone for everything else too. As well as medical care, people need time and emotional care. But how on earth can this be achieved in UK primary care in 2023? Is this really the role of a modern GP? Even if it was how can it now be in our over-stretched, fragmented, target-driven services? In North-West London, Selena Stellman and Benjamin Ellis have tested a personalised care model to improve the care offered to patients with fibromyalgia and high impact chronic pain. In this opinion piece in BJGP Life, they discuss the two key changes in their approach.
  22. News Article
    NHS England plans to reduce follow-up appointments is leading to patient safety risks and causing waiting lists to grow, an acute trust has warned. The NHSE plans were set out in the 2023-24 planning guidance which says trusts must cut outpatient follow-ups by 25% against 2019-20 levels by March, to increase capacity for new patients. But North Cumbria Integrated Care Foundation Trust has raised concerns that adhering to the policy will “exacerbate” its follow-up backlogs, warning that the delays “potentially… pose a risk of harm to patients whose condition may deteriorate when follow-up is late”. NHS Confederation told HSJ it thought the policy “has risks” because it could mean that patients needing follow-ups will wait for longer, although the organisation also saw benefits. It said hospital leaders had “mixed feelings” about the policy. The Patients Association also raised concerns that cancelling follow-ups for some patients “will exacerbate health inequalities”. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 12 October 2023
  23. News Article
    The NHS in England is facing mounting pressure amid a surge in patients attending A&E departments with minor ailments, health bosses have said. Emergency departments, which are designed for serious injuries and life-threatening emergencies only, are seeing an increase in people attending with sore throats, insomnia, coughs and earache. Data analysed by the Press Association news agency also shows more people going to A&E with complaints such as hiccups, nasal congestion, backache and nausea. Cases where sore throat was the chief complaint rose by 77% between 2021-22 and 2022-23, from 191,900 cases to 340,441. Patients going to A&E with coughs rose by 47%, from 219,388 to 322,500, while attendances for nosebleeds rose by a fifth, from 47,285 cases to 56,546. Miriam Deakin, the director of policy and strategy at NHS Providers, said: “The rise in A&E admissions is piling even more pressure on to an already stretched NHS. Persistent strain on primary care services, including GPs and dentists, means patients often resort to A&E when they cannot access timely care elsewhere. “Minor ailments such as coughs, earache, fever, nausea and hiccups can and should be managed through more appropriate services such as pharmacies and NHS 111 online. This could ease pressure on emergency departments, whose priority is to deliver urgent care for those most in need. Boosting capacity of staff, beds and equipment in these settings would also significantly help. However, this requires proper funding and support from the government.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 10 October 2023
  24. Content Article
    Patient initiated follow up and remote clinical reviews show promise in alleviating capacity issues and ensuring timely care, with positive patient feedback and early intervention benefits Media interest regularly reports on the three headline performance measures of the NHS; 18-week target, cancer wait targets, and four hour waits in emergency departments. There is, however, another large group of patients that we do not have any targets for and receive no media attention, who Peter Towers, NHS service manager, has termed the “fourth group”. These are the patients who have started their treatment but cannot be discharged back to primary care as they require continued secondary outpatient care.
  25. Content Article
    Urgent funding is required to clear waiting list backlogs and drive Northern Ireland's long-term healthcare transformation, the Northern Ireland Audit Office has said in a new report which outlines the health service's "critical situation" after almost a decade of worsening waiting lists for elective care. The NI Audit Office looked at waiting list data from 2014 to 2023. It found the number of patients waiting for elective care has risen by 452,000 during that nine-year period. The Audit Office also said: "Available information suggests waiting list performance levels are significantly worse in Northern Ireland compared with the other UK regions."
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