Face-to-face GP visits down 40% in January

THE number of GP appointments in England fell 14 per cent in January compared with 12 months earlier, data estimates show.

And face-to-face GP sessions dropped by nearly 40 per cent.

Meanwhile, telephone appointments more than doubled compared with last January.

The 14 per cent fall coincided with the third lockdown in England announced on January 4.

Figures from NHS Digital showed around 24 million appointments took place in January, compared with 27.9 million in January last year.The estimated number of appointments in England dropped year-on-year every month between February 2020 and January 2021, except September when it rose by two per cent compared to the same month in 2019.

The biggest year-on-year falls were in April and May in the first national lockdown – down 32 per cent and 33 per cent respectively.

There were 21.7 million face-toface appointments in January 2020 compared with 13.2 million last month, a drop of 8.5 million.The number of telephone appointments rose 158 per cent during the same period – to 9.6 million.

In January 2020 face-to-face appointments accounted for

80 per cent of the total, compared with 56 per cent last month.

There has been a year-on-year fall in seeing the GP in person every month since March last year.

This is matched by rises in phone appointments, peaking with a 217 per cent increase in June.

Professor Martin Marshall, chairman of the Royal College of GPs, said: “When the pandemic hit, GPs and our teams transformed the way we delivered many of our services in order to keep staff and patients safe and maintain infection control in surgeries.

“When patients have needed face-to-face appointments, these have been facilitated in as safe a way as possible.

“And we are finding much lower prevalence of common winter illnesses, such as colds and flu, which makes up a high number of GP consultations this time of year.”