Improving access to regular services is not as straightforward as just extending opening hours, which current Government policies favour
Martin Roland
Out-of-hours primary care services – such as a telephone consultation followed by a home visit or attendance at an out-of-hours centre – present several disadvantages compared to in-hours services. Not only are these services more expensive to the NHS, but maintaining the high standards of care and patient experience out-of-hours is challenging. In part this is because patients using out-of-hours services will often be seen by doctors unfamiliar with their potentially complex case histories. For these reasons, modern healthcare systems aim to reduce demand for out-of-hours primary care.
In a study published in the Emergency Medicine Journal, researchers from the University of Cambridge and the University of Exeter Medical School analysed data from almost 570,000 respondents to the 2011/2012 English General Practice Patient Survey to see why people used out-of-hours services and to identify ways of reducing this burden.
The researchers found that a proportion of patients faced a number of potential barriers to accessing GP surgeries including an ability to get through to the surgery on the telephone or to get an appointment, urgent or otherwise, as well as inconvenient opening hours. The patients who experience these difficulties have a higher chance of resorting to the use of out-of-hours primary care services.
Image: GP consultation with a female patient
Credit: Julian Claxton Photography, Wellcome Images
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge