Improving access to appointments at Laurie Pike Health Centre.

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Rising demand makes it increasingly difficult for patients to access appointments. Laurie Pike Health Centre (LPHC) operates a predominantly same-day booking policy in order to manage appointment requests from its 18 000 patients. We sought to quantify the number of requests, in order to estimate the unmet demand. AIM: 1) To estimate the met and unmet demand for same-day appointments; 2) To assess how capacity for same-day appointments compares to demand; 3) To analyse how well LPHC is utilising its available appointment slots. METHOD: We created a data collection tool to count the total number of patient requests by type. We grouped types into four categories: 1) medical appointment requests; 2) sick notes and results requests; 3) other appointment requests (such as healthcare assistant, nurse); and 4) admin/other. Category-specific percentages were applied to call log data to estimate the number of appointment requests per category. Capacity was measured by counting the total number of same-day GP/advanced nurse practitioner (ANP) appointment slots. Consultation records for GP/ANP appointments were analysed to assess the appropriateness of the booking. RESULTS: Estimated average demand for same-day GP/ANP appointments was 222 per day. Average same-day capacity was 112 slots. After introducing pharmacist and video consultations, average capacity increased to 194 slots per day, a shortfall of 28 appointments. Consultation records indicated that 41% of GP/ANP appointments could have been seen by other practitioners; for example, musculoskeletal practitioners (14%). CONCLUSION: GP/ANP appointments alone cannot meet patient demand but a diversified workforce might. Alongside this, efforts to improve care navigation may free up to 41% of GP/ANP appointment slots.