Friday 1 July 2022 11:21 AM Want to see an actual GP and have a face-to-face appointment? You've only got a ... trends now
Just a quarter of GP appointments in England are face-to-face and with an actual doctor, MailOnline can reveal.
Critics have warned that general practice is heading down a ‘slippery slope’ where nurses and other staff are picking up the burden amid staffing shortages, with GPs becoming the last point of contact.
An NHS source told MailOnline that of the 27.5million GP appointments carried out across England in May, just 27 per cent were both in-person and with a qualified doctor.
That figure is not routinely published but publicly-available data shows 64 per cent of total GP appointments were face-to-face and 50.2 per cent were with a real GP.
The rest were made up of a mixture of virtual or telephone consultations and appointments led by practice nurses, physiotherapists and other medical professionals.
Sajid Javid, the Health Secretary, has demanded GPs do more in-person consultations after the share done physically plummeted during the pandemic.
The problem could get worse as surveys suggest one in six GP roles are vacant and as many as half of family doctors plan to quit in the next five years.
But the country's top GP said the current level of face-to-face appointments was 'probably about right', despite widespread reports of patients still struggling to see their doctor.
Professor Martin Marshall, chair of the Royal College of GPs, told a conference in London that going back to pre-pandemic levels of more than 80 per cent ‘just doesn’t make sense for patients’.
NHS England data shows 64 per cent of total GP appointments were face-to-face in May. The figure is the second-highest since the height of the first Covid wave forced the majority of appointments to be held virtually. But it is still well below pre-pandemic levels, when eight in 10 appointments took place in-person.
The latest monthly GP appointment data also shows 27.5million appointments took place last month.
Half of appointments — 13.8million — were with GPs and 12.8million (46.6 per cent) were with nurses or other members of staff, which could include acupuncturists, chiropodists or even counsellors in some cases.
The type of healthcare staff was not logged for 878,374 appointments.
Nurse practitioners have many of the same powers as GPs as they can examine and diagnose patients, as well as provide treatment, prescriptions and referrals.
Meanwhile, 17.6million of consultations took place face-to-face (64.1 per cent).
The figure is the second highest since the pandemic took off in spring 2020.
But it is still well below pre-pandemic levels, when eight in 10 appointments took place in-person.
A third of appointments in May were phone calls, while 0.5 per cent took place via video or online.
An NHS source admitted that even though face-to-face appointments are recovering, just 42 per cent of all in-person consults were with actual GPs.
Dennis Reed, director of Silver Voices, a campaign group for elderly people, told MailOnline the figure highlighted the double-whammy hurting patients.
While the lack of