Information for practices
Using a scoping exercise we will identify the range of ways in which general practices in England and Scotland are currently providing alternatives to face to face consultations. We will be sending a very short questionnaire in the post, that will take no more than 5 minutes to complete, to all practices in and around the Bristol and Oxford area in England and Lothian, the Highlands and the Islands in Scotland, to identify what alternatives have been tried, are currently being used or practices may plan to use in the future.
View the Alt-Con Questionnaire (PDF, 416kB).
In the second phase of the project we will identify approximately 8 practices with varied experience of implementing these alternatives to act as case studies.
In each case study practice we will interview clinicians and other practice staff, including receptionists, to understand the alternatives to face to face consultations that have been tried, why and how these were introduced, key aspects of local context, barriers and facilitators to implementation, and intended benefits for patients, clinicians and/or practices. We will explore ideas and assumptions about how the alternative forms of contact might lead to benefits.
We will interview patients to explore advantages/disadvantages of alternatives to face to face consultation, and how different forms of communication impact on the consultation and the doctor-patient relationship. We will purposively select patients with different characteristics (e.g. age, deprivation, long term conditions). A key focus will be the impact of alternative forms of access on different patient groups and whether they increase or reduce access inequalities.
We will observe how practices record details of consultations not delivered face to face and, if possible, use routine data to quantify this, analysing the number of patients using these alternatives, how this has changed over time, and in particular take-up by different patient groups.