The hotly-debated issue of extended GP opening times came to the fore once again this week when a Monitor survey claimed that a third of patients are unhappy with access to GP appointments. The survey of 3,315 patients by the healthcare regulator found that a large number (30%) said they found it difficult to get…

As the number of patient contacts in general practice steadily rises and the nature of healthcare becomes increasingly complex, it is perhaps not surprising that many practices view telephone-based consultations and triage as a way of safely managing increasing demand while also meeting patients’ understandable desires for a timely response to their requests for urgent…

Following on from previous Practice Index blogs that have focused on staffing levels and ratios of staff to numbers of patients, this week we’re concentrating on the number of GP appointments per 1,000 patients and what practices can do to ensure they’re offering the best possible access to their patients. Plenty of figures are available…

General practice is often organised around clinical ‘sessions’. But what exactly is a clinical session? One practice manager recently told Practice Index that he’s witnessed sessions comprising three hour clinics at 10 minutes per patient, four straight hours of 12 minute appointments, two and a half hour clinics with an hour of triage or even…