The Future of Primary Care in the UK – After The Storm

GPs working remotely has worked fantastically well. Due to being unable to safely social distance, admin staff have been able to carry out tasks working from home. This is a great way to provide a service for our patients. Waiting for a GP to call you is better than sitting in a surgery waiting room waiting to be called in. MS Teams has provided a good backbone structure for meetings, with fewer people need to cancel or postpone meetings which is very important managing a remote working team. Patients have seen benefits feeling telephone triage before seeing a GP face to face is time saving and effective for them.

There is a danger in telephone consultations both from the patient who plays up their symptoms and those who play them down which a fact to face consultation can reveal. I accept there may be more place for some remote consultation however technology cannot replace human relationships particularly in this day and age of mental health awareness where isolation can be a major factor. In the main I see no good reason for a 24/7 service as most GP consultations are not medically urgent and those that are can be dealt with through out of hours or emergency departments

The current workload, the fallout from the associated burnout will provide significant challenge to primary care. Patient demands and unrealistic expectations (driven by the belief we have done very little during the pandemic) is and has demoralised staff - many of whom will look to leave the NHS

I hope that we continue to positively embrace new technology and creative ways of working and providing Care. However we need to be thoughtful of the impact and long term unsustainability of patients increased new expectations for a rapid primary care response service and the challenges it imposes.

The range of ways in how consultations are managed are definitely here to stay, we will certainly be continuing with telephone and video consultations. We also implemented a 'buzzer system' for patients to wait in their car rather than in the waiting room to reduce transmission of viruses, again we will continue with this.

The face of primary care has changed forever - there is no need to have clinicians onsite - our business can have a more flexible approach - other healthcare professionals are important to our future