Fewer than six in 10 GP appointments held face-to-face in Black Country and Staffordshire
Fewer than six in 10 GP appointments in the Black Country and Staffordshire were held face-to-face after major steps to ease Covid restrictions went ahead, figures reveal.
Charity The Patients Association has called for in-person appointments to be the default option, after it found patients nationally had struggled to access primary care in “ways that met their needs” throughout the coronavirus pandemic.
Data from NHS England shows 637,000 GP appointments were carried out in June with the NHS Black Country and West Birmingham Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) area – 56 per cent of which involved a face-to-face meeting.
A total of 67,800 appointments were carried out that month in the Stafford and Surrounds CCG area, which involved 58 per cent of in-person meetings. And it was 59 per cent of the 57,400 GP appointments held in June within the NHS Cannock Chase CCG area that were carried out face-to-face.
The NHS cautioned a small number of appointments held via video call may have been logged as face-to-face appointments by GPs.
Rachel Power, chief executive of The Patients Association, said the charity welcomed the move to require practices to offer more in-person appointments to patients who want them, but investment was needed to ensure accessibility of primary care in the event of future pandemics.
She said: "Phone appointments, which is the other way most patients consult with their GPs, have become more common, and some patients like and will prefer them in future.
"But the pandemic shows the consequences of not investing adequately in the NHS."
But health chiefs in the region said GPs have adapted to provide patients with "safer methods of accessing services" during the pandemic – and said the hybrid way of working will allow GPs to treat more patients.
NHS England issued guidance to GP practices in May urging them to offer more face-to-face appointments as coronavirus restrictions continued to ease.
But across England, just 56 per cent of consultations were held in person in June – a steep drop from the levels seen in June 2019, when 81 per cent of appointments were face-to-face.
However, it was an improvement on the 47 per cent recorded in June 2020.
