51³Ô¹ÏÍø

A new study has found no correlation between satisfaction with GP opening hours and the number of visits to A&E in England.

The observational was led by 51³Ô¹ÏÍø and is published today in .

Lead author from 51³Ô¹ÏÍø and colleagues compared patients' experiences of with the number of visits in their areas in England from 2011-2012 to 2013-2014. They examined reports from 's annual , and included patients registered to 8,124 GP surgeries.

They measured how satisfied patients were with three factors at their GP surgeries: the ease of making an appointment with them, their opening hours, and patients' overall experience. They then matched the responses with A&E departments in their area to observe any correlation with the number of visits to A&E.

Overall, areas where patients were happier with the ease of making appointments, which could be for example by using , saw slightly fewer visits to A&E.

However, satisfaction with surgery opening hours and overall patient experience seemed to have no impact on A&E visit rates.

The study suggests that better satisfaction with GP hours, for example because of  proposed by the government, does not affect the number of visits made to A&E in their geographical area. However, making the appointment booking process easier for patients was associated with slightly fewer A&E visits in that area.

The authors say their research might call into doubt the to extend GP surgery hours, and supports finding alternative options to ease the burden on A&E departments.

The authors measured satisfaction with opening hours without linking them explicitly to daytime weekday, or evening and weekend, appointment availability. They hypothesise that although weekend and evening appointments are convenient for healthy, working aged adults, those who are likely to need medical attention more urgently are older people or those who are chronically ill and not currently working full time.

Alternative actions

Senior author and practicing GP Professor Azeem Majeed from 51³Ô¹ÏÍø's  said: "The government must find alternative ways to handle current pressures on A&E departments. For example, we could improve access to GP appointments during normal opening hours, instead of spending scarce NHS resources on extended opening schemes."

Dr Cowling, also from 51³Ô¹ÏÍø's School of Public Health, said: "It makes sense to think that extending GP hours will ease the burden on other NHS services, but our study suggests this might not be the case with A&E."

"" by Thomas E Cowling, Azeem Majeed, and Matthew J Harris, published 22 January 2018 in BMJ Quality & Safety

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