Remote GP and other primary care consultations can be as effective as face-to-face appointments for some conditions, new research has found. A study by a team at Imperial College London said health outcomes for patients who had remote appointments for mental illness, alcohol misuse, weight management and for advice on stopping smoking at least matched…

Practices have had little respite over the summer, GP leaders warned, as new data showed a significant increase in appointments in July. Practices in England delivered 27.8 million appointments in the month compared with 26 million a year earlier, according to the NHS England data. June had seen an even bigger increase in appointments, from…

How is it September already? Goodness knows where summer went. Frankly, the question has to be asked; did we even have summer this year? I might have missed it with all the rain! Once holidays are over, schools go back, and supermarkets start selling off their remaining bags of barbeque supplies at half-price, it’s common…

Practices are to receive bonus payments for bringing forward the COVID and flu vaccination programme because of the risks of the new variant virus, it has been announced. NHS England said the programme should begin on 11 September – three weeks earlier than the planned October start. The alarm has been caused by the identification…

Armed forces veterans have been urged to identify themselves to general practices so they can be referred for support with a major national project. Government ministers say the Op Restore programme has capacity to provide care for many more than the 740 veterans who have received referrals so far. It says that referrals will usually…

This isn’t a new problem, but I think it’s time we launched a challenge relating to Vaccination and Immunisation payments, CQRS and the ‘business rules’… We recently had to update a CQRS submission as the data extraction had picked up one fewer vaccination than we had on our records. It turns out that the patient…

The number of incidents of staff receiving abuse from patients or their relatives has risen in the last couple of years. According to a recent Pulse FOI request, this includes the number of crimes committed at GP practices that involve violence or harassment and the number of public order offences at GP practices. Of course,…