Longer GP opening hours will fail to divert patients from hospital emergency departments, a study has shown.
Researchers found no link between how satisfied people were with opening hours and the number of visits to A&E in England. Azeem Majeed, from Imperial College London’s School of Public Health, a practising GP and senior author of the study published in BMJ Quality & Safety, said: “The government must find alternative ways to handle pressures on A&E departments.”
The government wants everyone to have access to evening and weekend GP appointments by 2020. The study looked at patients’ satisfaction with the ease of making an appointment, opening hours and the overall experience at 8,124 GP surgeries as reported in NHS England’s patient survey. They compared those with demand at A&E departments. Areas where patients were happy with the ease of making appointments reported slightly fewer A&E visits. The other two measures — opening hours and overall experience — had no apparent impact on A&E visiting rates.