Daily Mail

See more patients, GPs told

NHS boss admits surgeries still offering too many video or phone consultati­ons

- By Victoria Allen Science Correspond­ent

FAMILY doctors have not struck the right balance between in- person and online appointmen­ts, a top NHS official has admitted.

Shera Chok, deputy chief medical officer at NHS Digital, said some patients preferred to see a doctor face to face.

‘Because of the pandemic, everything pivoted around two-anda-half years ago,’ she told the Cheltenham Science Festival.

‘So we were told to do more remote consultati­ons in 2020 to try and reduce the risk and to keep people safe.

‘We’re trying to find our way back to the right balance. I don’t think we’re there yet.’

On the move to remote consultati­ons, which typically involve phone and video calls, the east London GP added: ‘Some patients really like remote consultati­ons, that they are typing queries at 10 o’clock at night, and get somebody to call them within a few days. Other patients really don’t like it.’

Around 80 per cent of GP appointmen­ts were face to face before the pandemic but this fell to just 47 per cent in April 2020.

The latest figures show that around two thirds were in-person this April.

Jenny Chong, of the Medway NHS Trust in Kent, said virtual appointmen­ts were a form of ‘digital exclusion’ for some people, usually the elderly, who did not use the internet. ‘I do understand face to face – we lose that kind of context and that is digital exclusion,’ she said.

‘But at least, with a lot of other patients, we can give them the appointmen­ts faster, quicker. You don’t have to travel in, there’s less of a carbon footprint.’

The Daily Mail has been campaignin­g for more in- person appointmen­ts and NHS England issued guidance last month saying they must be offered to patients ‘unless there are good clinical reasons to the contrary’.

Professor Martin Marshall of the Royal College of GPs said: ‘In-person consulting is and will remain core to general practice, and the majority of consultati­ons are being delivered in this way.’

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