GP consultations held over the phone are being falsely recorded as 'face to face'

GP phone consultations are being falsely recorded as face-to-face appointments, health chiefs admitted last night. 

In-person appointments made up around 80 per cent of the total before the pandemic but have fallen to 58 per cent in the latest monthly figures. 

Even this number is thought to be inflated because of a systems error. 

‘We do acknowledge that there may be quality issues with the data and instances where the data may not be a true representation of what may be happening in all practices,’ an NHS official told the Daily Telegraph. 

The average number of sessions GPs works in a day have gone down over the last decade while their wage growth has gone up. In 2012 the average GP worked 7.3 sessions a week but this has now fallen to 6.6 a week, the equivalent of just over three days of work a week. In the same period the average GP income went up by more than £6,000. A GP’s daily work is divided into sessions. According to the NHS, a full-time GP works 8 sessions a week, formed of two sessions a day, generally starting at 8am and finishing at 6.30pm, though these hours can vary

A doctor consults with a patient in April 2020, during the first Covid lockdown (stock image)

‘From March 2020, face-to-face appointment mode data may not be entirely reflective of what happens in the practices, as appointment types have been assigned to appointment modes prior to the pandemic. 

‘Thus, even if the appointment was carried out through a different mode, the appointment registers as a face-to-face consultation.’ 

Dennis Reed, the director of Silver Voices, a campaign group for the over-60s, said: ‘This needs to be investigated. How many of the figures have been fiddled in this way? It is really worrying.’ 

Anne Bedish, 68, is one of the patients whose telephone appointments have been logged as face to face. 

When she contacted Glenlyn Medical Practice, in East Molesey, Surrey, to question the discrepancy, they confirmed that the appointments had been by telephone, but the record went unchanged. 

Boris Johnson and his ministers promised in May to ensure face-to-face appointments were offered to all. 

But the Royal College of General Practitioners warned MPs this would be an empty promise if there was still too little capacity. 

The Daily Mail has been campaigning for in-person GP appointments to be the default option

Just 0.6 per cent of appointments in August were home visits, down from one per cent before the Covid crisis. Doctors have long called for them to be scrapped because they are too time-consuming