Fears that new service will fatally undermine traditional general practice
Expansion of the digital GP service, GP at Hand, risks destabilising care for patients with the greatest needs, argues an expert in The JJ竞技 today.
Martin Roland, Emeritus professor of health services research at the University of Cambridge, asks could - and should - smartphone consultations replace traditional approaches to accessing primary care, and will the new service make the NHS’s current crisis in primary care better or worse?
Babylon, which runs GP at Hand with a group of London GPs, provides remote consultations with doctors and health care professionals via text and video messaging through its mobile application.
Almost a ll initial contacts are through smartphone consultations, explains Roland. Only if the problem cannot be sorted out on the phone do patients travel to one of five clinics in London for a face-to-face consultation.
Yet some fear that the new service will fatally undermine traditional general practice, leaving GPs with sick and complex patients to look after as fit young patients move to GP at Hand, he writes. Indeed, the new service has proved popular, with over 50,000 patients now enrolled.
A recent independent evaluation confirms that GP at Hand caters principally to a healthy, affluent, young, and working population, says Roland. However, he points out that a quarter of GP at Hand’s newly registered patients move back to a conventional NHS practice, many within two weeks.
The Care Quality Commission recently rated GP at Hand as “good” in most areas but found it needed to improve its performance in cervical screening and childhood immunisation coverage. “The service clearly meets the needs of some patients who value a fast convenient service, but it falls short of providing comprehensive proactive primary care,” says Roland.
He acknowledges that phone and video consultations have much to offer as an adjunct to conventional primary and secondary care, and notes that Babylon’s entry into the NHS is already stimulating other practices to widen the range of services they offer.
But could—and should—smartphone consultations replace traditional approaches to accessing primary care in developed countries, and will Babylon’s GP at Hand make the NHS’s current crisis in primary care better or worse, he asks?
There are fears that Babylon will make the shortage of GPs worse, he writes, although the evaluation found that GP at Hand enabled some GPs to increase their NHS work, finding it convenient to work part time from home alongside their work in conventional NHS practices.
However, he argues that the current NHS funding formula “does not adjust adequately for the costs of providing a comprehensive primary care service and the NHS needs urgently to review its arrangements that have allowed a private company to cream off fit young patients from existing NHS practices.”
If the GP at Hand model became widespread, “it would risk destabilising care for patients with the greatest needs and those who need regular proactive care,” he concludes.
[Ends]
24/07/2019
Note to Editors
Editorial: General practice by smartphone
Journal: The JJ竞技
Link to Academy of Medical Sciences press release labelling system:
https://press.psprings.co.uk/AMSlabels.pdf
Peer-reviewed? No
Evidence type: Opinion
Subject: Digital GP service
Link to paper: https://www.bmj.com/content/366/bmj.l4713
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