>>They first noticed it some 6 months ago but didn't do anything about it because she couldn't get a GP appointment
For me, a typical morning pre-Covid was 15 face-to-face appointments, a couple of telephone ones, and 0-2 housecalls (plus admin/results/etc)
From March to about July we changed to telephone triage for everything, and I was doing 6-9 telephone appointments, of which perhaps 1 would need to be seen F2F and virtually no housecalls.
Demand pretty much fell off a cliff during lockdown.
I spoke with my friend in Preston who has a busier surgery, and although his appointment numbers are higher, he had a similar proportional drop in footfall during lockdown.
Now, the numbers are back up close to pre-covid levels roughly, with 10 telephone slots of which 3-4 generally warrant a F2F appt, and maybe 1 housecall.
The slight reduction in appointments is/was helpful when colleagues have to call off/shield.
I was always very sceptical of telephone triage in the past but it has surprised me how much can be managed on the phone +/- emailed pictures - it's not any quicker than F2F appointments though.
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