Face-to-Face Medical Appointments

Baroness Meacher Excerpts

Thursday 19th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

I agree with my noble friend that the terms of service should be clear, although I am not sure that we necessarily have the scope for or benefits of a legal right per se. However, perhaps I may disagree with him on one point. He said that there is a greater demand among older citizens for face-to-face contact, but that is not our experience. Older citizens are often very engaged digitally, prefer to engage with their clinicians, on occasion, from the comfort of their own homes, and can often be early adopters of such technologies.

[Baroness Meacher (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I agree with the Minister that, much to doctors’ surprise, many older people prefer to have virtual appointments, whether by Zoom or telephone. We can make assumptions about people, but doctors have been quite surprised by the extent to which patients prefer having an online consultation. Does the Minister agree that, in the end, this needs to be a matter for doctors to decide? Very often, they will have an initial conversation and then agree to see the patient when that is necessary. However, this is probably not a matter for government to decide on or to intervene in, and certainly not until doctors have settled down to a pattern of consultations based on their experience and understanding of their patients.

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

The noble Baroness makes a good point, but I would put a slightly different perspective on it. Doctors have not been the most progressive group in this area; as she says, they have been caught by surprise by patients’ views. I would actually give patients the loudest voice in this particular conversation.