Many practices are still concerned about GP capacity, but there are still plenty of opportunities to offer online booking, especially for planned care. Think wider than just GP appointments and ensure that anything that can be prebooked is available to book online too, ensuring equity of access and allowing patients who have been requested to have a follow-up, clinic review, medication review etc. to book online. Guidance for directly bookable appointments offers suggestions for the types of appointments that can be booked online. Some patients may prefer to continue using other approved patient-facing service Apps to book and cancel their appointment.  GP practices can still view this activity via the Patient online management information portal for all online appointment data.

It is important to have an open approach to using these technologies in general practice. Sometimes restricting access to or disabling features of online booking systems can exacerbate demand and capacity issues when switching certain functions off or having them only in certain days/times of the day, as it just funnels demand into peaks at different points in time. Some of these tools will help manage that demand more effectively and easily. Therefore, it is important to use the resources below to optimise online appointment and booking systems.

Benefits for GP practices

• Reduction in unplanned surgery visits in person to make, cancel or reschedule appointments
• Reduction in telephone calls to make, cancel or reschedule appointments, reducing pressure on phone lines (which can have an effect of reducing call wait times overall) and practice staff
• Potential to save staff time with less direct patient contact, particularly when booking high-capacity clinics such as seasonal vaccination clinics
• Fewer missed appointments – NHS figures released in 2021tell us that it is 21% less likely that a patient will fail to attend an appointment booked online
• Where a patient uses the option of including a reason for the appointment, an opportunistic review by a member of the practice team may suggest there is a more appropriate person to deal with the problem, and the patient contacted accordingly (remembering that patients still have the option of seeing a specific/preferred clinician). For staff trained in care navigation, it is relatively easy to identify if an appointment is with the wrong clinician; however the onus will always be on the patient making the booking

Benefits for patients

• Fewer surgery visits needed to make, cancel, or reschedule appointments
• Fewer telephone calls to make, cancel or reschedule appointments, reducing the frustrations of lengthy call waiting times
• Ease of use and convenience with 24/7 access
• Choice of clinician
• Online services can be helpful to people with reduced mobility, sensory difficulties or learning difficulties
• Patients can access the service through the NHS App, other commercial providers of Apps, and the practice website, using a smartphone, tablet, or computer
• People with proxy access can book appointments on a patient’s behalf which is useful if support is needed for a patient to attend an appointment
• Patients may be able to choose whether a face-to-face or telephone appointment is the most appropriate enabling flexibility to fit around their schedules
• Patients can check their appointment details in the online portal, reducing the potential for missed appointments and the need to reschedule

Resources

• making Appointments available for online booking
• how to name Appointments
• patient online communications pack

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