By Kara Dudley “Enquire at Reception about Extended GP Access” or “Ask at Reception for an evening or weekend appointment” Which sounds better? Which is easier for your patient to understand? When you work in primary care, it can be all too easy to rely on the jargon that we all use on a daily basis.…

Earlier this week, the Prime Minister launched the UK Government’s first Loneliness Strategy, designed to tackle what Theresa May described as one of the greatest public health challenges of our time. The headline news from the Strategy is that all GPs in England will be able to refer patients experiencing loneliness to community activities and…

GP practice managers are hitting back at recent news stories stating that the NHS pays £543m a year to GPs for 3.6 million ‘ghost’ patients who don’t exist. A number of newspapers reported on the story first published by the Mail on Sunday that despite a crackdown launched three years ago on so-called ‘ghost patients’,…

More than a million patients have been forced to find new practices in the last five years because of the growing rate of closures, it was reported today. 445 practices closed between 2013 and 2017, according to the latest analysis of closures. About 270 of these have occurred since 2016. In total about 1.3 million…

Patients signing up for an NHS-backed on-line GP service do not always realise they are being deregistered from their local practice, it has been claimed. The Sunday Times reported yesterday (15 April 2018) that patients signing up for NHS-backed GP at Hand – an online service that promises to connect people with an NHS doctor…

A new NHS electronic outpatient system should halve the number of missed appointments in England and save at least £50 million, developers say. The NHS e-Referral service (e-RS) will be introduced from 1 October 2018 that will enable patients to book or alter appointments online, using a mobile phone or tablet. The switch to electronic…

(Time to read: 5 minutes) Figures released this week show that public satisfaction with the overall NHS has dropped 6% in a year, taking it to 57% – its lowest level since 2011. More worryingly, public satisfaction with GP services has fallen to its lowest level (65%) since records began in 1983, according to the…