By Helena Vesty
Copyright manchestereveningnews
“We promised to tackle the 8am scramble – that’s exactly what we’re delivering.” That’s how Care Minister Stephen Kinnock described changes to online GP services being enforced from today (Wednesday, October 1). But whether those changes have come to all GP practices today is still up for debate. And whether it will make the huge progress promised to patients could be doubtful. From today, all NHS GP surgeries in England will be contractually obligated to keep their online consultation tools open from 8am until 6.30pm between Monday and Friday. Under the new system, patients will be able to request appointments, ask questions, and describe symptoms online throughout the day rather than calling their surgery or visiting in person. It is hoped that this will help free up practice phone lines for those who need them most, and make it more convenient to access appointments, and marks a major step towards the government’s ambition of ending the 8am scramble. Never miss a story with the MEN’s daily Catch Up newsletter – get it in your inbox by signing up here In Greater Manchester, every GP practice has some kind of online service. But, like much of the rest of the practices in England that do offer online services, how they works varies from practice to practice. Some GPs turn online requests off when they reach a certain number, while others only have the online function available for a few hours a day. Today, I took a quick look at the online offering of 10 GP practices in different boroughs of Greater Manchester – and the results varied wildly. Online requests were turned off all day for one GP in Hulme , with no opening or closing times advertised. In Middleton , one practice had online requests on offer all day, but again with no opening or closing times, or information on whether they get turned off depending on demand. Over in Boothstown, online request forms could be submitted between 8am and 6pm. But in Didsbury , one practice offered online request forms between 7am and 10am on weekdays. While, in Gatley, medical request forms were available on weekdays between 8am and 2pm. In Bury , online services requests were available on AskmyGP until 2pm, if urgent. The practice advised that any requests made after 4pm may not get a same-day response. In Cheadle Hulme and Heaton Moor, two GPs offered online services from 8am to 6.30pm. But those practices used the nationally popular AccuRX to host their online services, which appears to have updated many of its websites to advertise the government’s mandated opening hours, the M.E.N. understands. The same goes for Econsult, another online consultation website used by GPs widely across England. A GP practice in Bolton using Econsult also offered online services from 8am to 6.30pm. However, at another Stockport-based practice which used AccuRX, one patient reported that the practice advertises an 8-3pm timeframe for online consultations and appointments, the practice had closed off that option by 9am today. The message on the website read: “We have paused access to online requests and we have reached safe working capacity for the day.” It seems not all practices have implemented the supposedly universal new rule that the government said would be enforced from today. But even if they did, this change has not come with any funding. As the M.E.N. reported earlier this year, opening the floodgates to requests all the time runs the risk of clogging GP services even further. Bolton GP Dr Helen Wall spoke about opening up online consultations and requests during the Covid-19 pandemic. She said: “As we’ve gone digital, we’ve become more accessible. By trying to fix the very problem that we were struggling to cope with – demand – we’ve increased it. “People contact us now for much more minor things than they would have done previously, because they can fill an online form in or they can do something digitally, reply to a text message. “We had online consultations during Covid and people would send us an online medical form at 3am and say they had a sore toe. Then when you would call them at 11am, they’d say, ‘well, it’s better now. I forgot I even sent that in.’ “The fact that people can ring us, have an appointment while they’re at work during the day means that they’ll just get one just in case. Whereas before, they might have not taken an afternoon off work unless it was something that was really serious, or really bothering them. “It’s Amazon Prime culture. You can, so you will.” And today’s changes have come with a requirement that all online requests are triaged quickly. The work of doctors will have to move towards reviewing all of those requests – and that will mean they have less time for appointments , say some other experienced GPs I spoke to today . Join the Manchester Evening News WhatsApp group HERE Still, Making online services available for longer will likely better suit busy working people who need a fast way of starting the process of getting help between tasks or meetings. That could mean that phone lines are freed up for urgent problems, or elderly patients who don’t use online services. The government makes the big claim that ‘when patients can’t get through on the phone, 6.6 per cent end up in A&E – which is worse for them and more expensive for the taxpayer. By fixing the front door of the NHS , these reforms will help to ease pressures on other parts of the health service’. Speaking to community doctors today, it’s clear they feel GPs will not be the ones to benefit from that ‘easing pressure’.
