Question reference: S6W-02262
- Asked by: Tess White, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
- Date lodged: 16 August 2021
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Current status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 18 October 2021
Question
To ask the Scottish Government whether (a) Public Health Scotland and (b) NHS boards are collecting data on the way patients access treatment in GP surgeries in light of the changes to face-to-face appointments as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Answer
GP practices have remained open, accessible and at the forefront of our community services to deal with non-COVID-19 medical care throughout the pandemic. As outlined in the NHS Recovery Plan, a key aim is to work with our GPs to continue to restore face-to-face practice consultations as quickly and safely as possible, while ensuring everyone can continue to make use of eHealth services if that is their preference.
Public Health Scotland have published guidance on social distancing and infection control measure in health settings, changing the 2 metre social distancing rule to 1 metre, enabling more patients in waiting rooms, while continuing to ensure that vulnerable patients and staff are kept safe. In addition, specific guidance to general practices has been published making it clear that there is no longer a need to triage every patient, although they should continue to screen patients for Covid before seeing them face-to-face. We will continue to take advice from public health experts and clinicians when reviewing these measures.
With these recently announced changes I would expect the number of face-to-face appointments to increase.
While high quality data from across the health system is collected, we are working with stakeholders to improve the quality of data we can collect from GP practices to ensure it is robust.
We have continued to meet routinely with GPs and their representatives, and hear regularly from patients, to help build intelligence around appointments and pressures in GP practices throughout the pandemic, and are currently working together with NSS and PHS on a more advanced digital solution for capturing this information moving forward.