Access to General Practice: Innovation, Impact and sustainable change
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Whatever happened to all those attempts to change access to General Practice? Revisiting case studies to learn about innovation, impact and SUStainable change. (GP SUS)
IRAS ID
312590
Contact name
Catherine Pope
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Research governance, ethics and assurance
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
researchregistry7588, Research Registry
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 8 months, 31 days
Research summary
For decades there have been attempts to make new systems for timely access to appointments at the general practice, including offering online consultations, pre-consultation telephone calls or completion of an online form. During the 2020/21 pandemic many practices changed the way patients consulted with GPs and practice staff, using telephone and video consultations rather than face-to-face appointments.
We are asking: what happened after practices introduced changes to patient access? Did the systems work or did they need adjustments? Were there safety concerns? Did they change again in the pandemic? What might be learned from them to better serve patients in general practice in the long term? We have discussed this study widely and know these questions matter to patients as well as practice staff and policy makers. A public reviewer commented that access to appointments is THE most pressing issue facing general practice.
The aim of the study is to support lasting improvements that work for everyone. We will start by looking at all the different models of access that have been used, looking at all the published research and talking to doctors, patients, researchers and policymakers. We will then work with eight different general practices in England to learn as much as we can about the different systems they use, how and why they have been adapted locally and what they learnt about their system during the pandemic. We will compare these cases with the findings from a case study conducted separately by our collaborators in Copenhagen to see what we might learn for the UK from their experience. We will work with patients, the public and other stakeholders, to create resources that support changes for a truly patient centred general practice.REC name
South Central - Hampshire A Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
22/SC/0333
Date of REC Opinion
14 Oct 2022
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion