Doctors told to 'discourage face-to-face appointments' and screen patients online first

Doctors have been advised to discourage face to face patient appointments in order to promote the use of virtual consultations.

New guidance for the NHS states that practices are to “increase significantly the use of online consultations, as part of embedding total triage”.

According to The Telegraph, guidance issued by NHS England and seen by the newspaper says that when a patient calls, they should be encouraged to go online.

Doctors are instructed to “avoid directly booking patients who telephone the practice into an appointment” in order to prevent “disincentivising use of the online system”.

While practices may determine some “agreed exceptions”, in general, patients should be discouraged from finding ways around the system, the advice suggests.

Doctors and patients ‘need to be in the same room’

The guidance makes clear that anyone deemed by a doctor to need a face to face appointment should still get one, but states that around a third of all patients’ requests are able to be dealt with using online messaging.

Professor Martin Marshall, Chairman of the Royal College said that the Royal College was “pushing back” against the idea, in fear of risking missing diagnoses.

He said: “Once we get out of the pandemic and things return to a more normal way of living and working, we don’t want to see general practice become a totally, or even mostly, remote service.

“A lot of what we do is to build up a trusting relationship - and to do that you need to be in the same room so you can pick up the ‘soft signs’, such as anxiety.”

‘New methods close the door to patients’

Previously, the Patients' Association issued a warning stating that new ways of arranging GP appointments too often “closed the door” for patients.