Face-to-face GP appointments on the increase again after lockdown

Dr Chris Duffy, chair of the NHS Heywood, Middleton and Rochdale Clinical Commissioning Group

The number of local face-to-face GP appointments have started to increase again after dropping during lockdown, new analysis reveals.

NHS England has written to all GP practices to make sure they are communicating the fact doctors can be seen in person, face-to-face if necessary, as well as virtually.

The BBC Shared Data Unit combined the most recent monthly published data from NHS Digital, to see what has happened to face-to-face care since lockdown began. 

In February 2020, in Heywood, Middleton and Rochdale, 87% of GP appointments in the Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) area were in person. Just two months later, during the height of lockdown, this had fallen to 30%.

However, in person appointments have started to increase, rising to 43% as of July 2020.

Telephone appointments in the CCG area have also risen, going from an average of 11% last year to 35% in March 2020. This rose to 69% in April, and is now dropping, having reached 55% as of July.

Dr Chris Duffy, chair of Heywood, Middleton & Rochdale CCG, said: “In Heywood Middleton and Rochdale, like other areas, measures were taken at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic to ensure patients received their care safely.  

“Practices have been responding to the needs of their patients by contacting them through telephone and video consultations, however face-to-face consultations have and will continue to be carried out where it is clinically necessary and safe to do so.

“Practices and the CCG continue to do all we can to inform patients and let them know that their practice is still very much open to serve them and we aim to retain improved ways of working going forward.”

An NHS England spokesperson said: "It's entirely right that more GP appointments are now available by phone and online, and that is completely consistent with also saying that there still needs to be options of face to face appointments - which these figures confirm are available everywhere."

NHS Digital has said the quality of these data has been impacted by the pandemic itself and they should be classed as 'experimental statistics'.