Appointments in General Practice

eGPlearning Podblast

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Appointments in General Practice- A digital guide

Welcome

Live episode, please interact

Intoductions

Todays episode inspired by chat on NHS Digital Whats App group about appointments and access

2 themes to cover….

• What is an appointment? And what will count as activity

• Total triage, before and after - what is the best option for the practice and its patients

Up-coming document from NHSE will set out how NHSE will harvest/access data from CRMS (S1/EMIS) to assess activity within general practice to the level of individual surgeries.

• Information such as number and type of appointments.

Led to speculation about how this data will be used in the future…..

• Concerns that used to judge practices and that incorrect or unfair conclusions might be reached?
• Used to allocate resources? Correctly? Similar concerns
• Regulatory attention?
• Use by the media?

What constitutes as an appointment?

• Online / Telephone /video/ F2f / Administrative activity? - would this be covered by online/asynchronous?

• How do we log workload in practice, everything have an appointment slot ie oncall work/ admin etc.

• Supervision/ second opinion / Administrative tasks (non patient content but often time consuming)

• Dichotomy of primary vs secondary care contracts - PBR vs capitation based contract.

Thoughts? Gandhi

Needs to be some accountability for spending public money?

But will the right things be counted?

Demand? Or under delivery?

Can this data be helpful?

If demand/need reliably captured then can build case for redistribution?

Thoughts? Andy

Its coming - similar systems present or developing in other areas of public spending

Embrace - record everything and show our value - build the system to make this automatic

Lots of scope in recording the asynchronous/”online” admin work

Access and appointment options

So many - also discuss in the whatsapp

Lots of ways to structure appointment systems using different models and tools

What will / should the future look like?

Traditional models - return

Blind booking of f2f (or telephone) appointments with clinicians

Patient choice - Allow patient to book type of appointment and choose clinician

Reception guided

Total triage - during the crisis - examples

• All clinicians triage own cases and see for continuity (basic reception/admin triage)
• Single clinician triages incoming work and allocates to appropriate clinician or admin staff

Triage vs signposting

Tools helpful for these systems available…

Preconsultation information collection - eConsult etc.

Join our Digital First Providers guide on 29.7.20 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngNhAeMOw_Y

Electronic messaging

Telephone

Video

Photos

Even collection of obs via care home staff or remote devices in the future

Electronic guidance to streamline and improve choices

How do you manage your appointments at your practice? With the new shift