Face to face appointment “data”

Many of you will have seen the recent interest in NHS England’s GP appointment “data”, particularly the media feeding frenzy around face-to-face appointments.

Anyone with sufficient time on their hands to go through the lists may have found that it shows Park Road as offering no face-to-face appointments – 0% of the total.

This is, in common with most national NHS data, complete nonsense. Many of you have received letters in relation to your Covid status which have been similarly completely divorced from reality.

The actual data on appointments is as below, taking the years as running from 1st March in each year. The current year total and F2F appts are projected based on the numbers so far for the year, and so are in italics. The percentage of face-to-face appointments is actual.

You’ll see that, while overall appointment numbers dipped slightly during the 20-21 peak covid period, they were back above the 2019/20 baseline the following year, and are on course to climb again this year.

77% of available appointments are currently face-to-face, and we’ve never dropped much under 50%.