GP telephone sessions logged as ‘face-to-face’ appointments

GP telephone consultations are being incorrectly classed as “face-to-face” appointments in official statistics, NHS chiefs have admitted, following an investigation by The Daily Telegraph.

In recent weeks, ministers – including the Prime Minister – have intervened to promise patients access to face-to-face appointments.

Before the pandemic, about 80 per cent of consultations took place in a doctor’s surgery, but the latest monthly figure is just 58 per cent, with little change since officials vowed in May to give all patients the right to a “face-toface” appointment.

Now The Telegraph can disclose that even this figure exaggerates the number of consultations actually taking place in person.

NHS officials said that because of the way certain local systems were set up, some appointments were automatically being logged as face-to-face, regardless of how they were actually delivered.

Anne Bedish, a Telegraph reader, viewed her own patient record online, and was surprised to see that 12 telephone appointments she had in the past year had been recorded as “face-toface” consultations.

Mrs Bedish, 68, who suffers from a number of health problems and was on the Government’s clinically vulnerable list, contacted Glenlyn Medical Practice, in East Molesey, Surrey, to question the records. The team confirmed that the appointments had been by telephone, but the notes went unchanged.

NHS Digital – which publishes national data on GP appointments every month – suggested this pattern could occur far more widely, because of the way data had been recorded.

Officials said: “We do acknowledge that there may be quality issues with the data and instances where the data may not be a true representation of what may be happening in all practices.

“From March 2020, face-to-face appointment mode data may not be entirely reflective of what happens in the practices, as appointment types have been assigned to appointment modes prior to the pandemic.

“Thus, even if the appointment was carried out through a different mode, the appointment registers as a face-toface appointment on the system,” they added.

It has also emerged that the proportion of GP home visits has almost halved since before the pandemic.

NHS figures show that pre-covid roughly one per cent of all GP appointments were home visits, but in July and August they amounted to 0.6 per cent.

Welcome to the new world of work: part-time, flexible hours, working from home, yet with a wage packet big enough to support your lifestyle. It sounds great: work-life balance for all, with more time to spend with the kids (or the exercise bike). You can work as much – or as little – as you please. Some are even campaigning for the five-day full-time working week to be cut to four days, for the same salary obviously.

But what the advocates of the war on full-time work fail to acknowledge is that someone has to pay the price for this flexibility, as has become painfully apparent with GPS.

A survey has revealed that in 2019 the average GP was working a three-day week, while average pay for GPS rose to more than £100,000 a year. Even before the pandemic, patients were struggling to get appointments; a more “balanced” lifestyle for a doctor can mean a patient waiting longer for a diagnosis. It’s hard to see how the health service will ever be able to keep up with patient demand.

Last week research from Norway found that being able to see the same GP on a regular basis substantially reduces the risk of hospitalisation and premature death; yet in most of the UK it’s virtually impossible to see the same doctor on a repeat visit.

Far from being a crisis that desperately needs to be addressed, however, it often feels as if the GPS’ notoriously generous contract is a model that other sectors want to follow.

As the pandemic recedes, employers in both the public and private sector are being encouraged to prioritise the so-called well-being of their employees over everything else. The right to request flexible working is already enshrined in law, and can be useful for some employees so long as their manager agrees, but the Government has suggested this right could be extended to every employee from day one of a new job.

Nearly three months after the ending of Covid restrictions, many civil servants (and private-sector staff) are still reluctant to return to the office. They have discovered the joys of working from home and are not keen to start back on the daily commute, never mind the effect on their colleagues, their company, or the wider economy. Some train companies are planning to reduce services on Mondays and Fridays, given the lower passenger numbers.

The Government at first appeared keen to embrace the new zeitgeist. But some ministers are beginning to express their concern as the machinery of government falters; the head of the Civil Service, Simon Case, has told Whitehall departments to get more staff back at their desks. One minister has claimed that the August withdrawal from Afghanistan was hampered because too many officials were working from home and thus unable to share sensitive material. A huge backlog at the DVLA due to staff absence has played a part in the lorry driver shortage, with HGV licences taking much longer to process. Disconnection from team work doesn’t only damage the training of new staff and block creativity, it is also positively harmful to customer service.

For the millions of people in the UK whose jobs cannot be done at home, or who are self-employed, struggling to run a business, and for whom there is no option but to work long hours to pay their bills, the fashion for “well-being” is empty rhetoric. Worse, it’s preventing them from accessing essential services. If it persists, half of the workforce might be enjoying the new balanced lifestyle – but the other half will be paying for it.