General Practitioners: Telephone Services

(asked on 16th March 2016) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, whether his Department permits GP practices to require patients to have a telephone consultation prior to seeing a GP.


Answered by
Alistair Burt Portrait
Alistair Burt
This question was answered on 21st March 2016

There is no central guidance to general practitioner (GP) practices on waiting times for telephone consultations.

GPs can conduct telephone consultations with patients if they feel it is appropriate to do so. This could remove the need for the patient to go on to have a face to face consultation, however, it is for the GP to use his or her clinical judgement to decide if and when a face to face consultation should take place, and for the patient to decide if they wish to attend.

This Government is committed to improving access to GP consultations and the Prime Minister’s GP Access Fund encourages practices in the schemes to use innovative methods to provide appointments to patients.

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