As reported by GP Online, a report by Humberside LMC reveals that GPs, often due to poor communication and inappropriate work transfer, spend a significant amount of time addressing interface problems with hospitals and other healthcare organisations
Some GPs warned that as much as 30% to 40% of their working day was spent ‘directly or indirectly’ on tackling interface problems – and in Humberside alone, time equivalent to 97,084 GP appointments a year is wasted on the issue, the report said. At £42 per appointment, the LMC says interface problems cost the area more than £4m a year.
Nationally, the figures suggest 6m appointments a year – 12% of the extra 50m appointments in general practice promised by the government – worth more than £200m could be saved by tackling interface issues.
GP workload
Hospitals were the single biggest source of interface problems that drain clinical time, although around two thirds of interface problems relate to other organisations, the report found.
Humberside LMC chief executive medical director Dr Zoe Norris said: ‘Problems with the interface between primary and secondary care place a huge burden on general practice, with GPs in the Humber area having to spend around 280 hours resolving interface difficulties each week. That equates to over £4m in the cost of wasted time for our hard-working general practice workforce.’
Dr Norris added: ‘We’re calling for a renewed focus at system-wide level to tackle the interface burden, with action to eliminate the common interface problems which the report highlights.
‘While our report looks at the situation in the Humberside region, LMCs across England are seeing similar challenges. If the cost we see locally is mirrored nationwide, this represents a total of over £223m of NHS resources that could be better spent in general practice.’
Interface problems
Problems caused by communication – such as patients not being made aware of test results – were the most common issue, reported by 85% of respondents. Four in five highlighted problems with clinical investigations – particularly transfer of work from other providers, with GPs asked to ‘ initiate onward referrals, follow-up blood tests and other investigations, action results, and provide MED3 certificates’.
A total of 72% of respondents highlighted concerns relating to referrals or advice and guidance – including inappropriate rejections of referrals.
The report comes less than a year after NHS England’s delivery plan for recovering access to general practice warned that GP practices spend up to 20% of their time on ‘lower-value administrative work and work generated by issues at the primary-secondary care interface’.
Humberside LMCs said it would lobby other organisations locally to ‘create a package of support, and an implementation plan, to eliminate low level but time-consuming interface difficulties’, work to share more information about the impact of the problem and push for an ICB-level interface key performance indicator to drive improvements in how organisations interact.
The LMC called for integrated care systems to ‘prioritise and commit to the elimination of common interface difficulties including inappropriate requests for GPs to make onward referrals or to arrange further investigations, and to tackle poor quality communication.
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