General Practitioners

(asked on 6th July 2021) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to his Answer of 6 July 2021 to Question 24898 on General Practitioners, how his estimate of 31.5 million general practitioner appointments in April 2021 was calculated.


Answered by
Jo Churchill Portrait
Jo Churchill
Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
This question was answered on 13th July 2021

On 17 June 2021 NHS Digital published monthly data on appointments in general practice covering October 2018 to April 2021. This was the first general practitioner (GP) appointment publication to fully incorporate COVID-19 vaccination appointments delivered in general practice and Primary Care Networks for December 2020 to April 2021. The data shows there were an estimated 7.6 million vaccinations delivered in April 2021. Including these vaccinations, there were an estimated 31.5 million appointments in April 2021. Excluding vaccination appointments there were an estimated 24.0 million appointments in April 2021.

The publication includes an estimate of total appointments as data from 2% of practices are omitted from the collection. The estimate is calculated by taking the number of registered patients from missing practices and a simple calculation based on the number of appointments per registered patient from the practices included in the data collection.

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