GP access in Shropshire
Healthwatch Shropshire continues to receive patient experience highlighting issues with accessing GP services.
As part of our role in helping people understand NHS services we thought it would be helpful for patients if we were to analyse the data released by NHS Digital about General Practice appointments in Shropshire.
At the time of writing this report the latest data release was for August 2023, Appointments in General Practice, August 2023 - NHS Digital. Later months are now available and they include a link to an interactive visualisation tool for examining the data.
Key Findings
There is significant variation in:
- the number of appointments practices offer per patient
- the ratio of appointments offered with different types of clinical staff
- the percentages of patients waiting for different lengths of time for appointments from the time of booking
- the percentage of appointments held face-to-face, over the telephone or via video/online channels
- the percentages of patients who do not attend appointments across the different practices
In Shropshire practices the average percentage of appointments being with GPs was 47.6% compared with 45.5% across England.
There appears to be no correlation between the number of appointments offered and waiting times.
The average percentage of appointments carried out face to face in Shropshire is 73.2% which is higher than the national average of 67.9%
The total number of appointments where patients did not attend was 5,784. If these were 10-minute appointments it is the equivalent of 964 hours of clinical staff time in one month.
Downloads
If you would like this report in an alternative format or if you have any questions regarding it please Contact Us
