Cessation of Extended access to general practice collection

NHS England collected and published the Extended access to general practice collection. This captured data relating to extended access from every GP practice. Extended access is the offer, to registered patients of a practice, of pre-bookable appointments outside of core contractual hours, either in the early morning, evening or at weekends. This data has been available since September 2016.

NHS England has been evaluating its collections with a view to ceasing those collections of lower value to reduce unnecessary burden on the NHS of collecting and processing data. This survey has been identified as part of this process because:

• The date for full roll-out of extended access was brought forward to 1 October 2018. NHS England contacted every CCG and all confirmed that the whole of their population is able to benefit from extended access appointments.
• The collection required all c.7,000 GP practices in England to submit data and, and although it is a contractual requirement in 19/20 of the GP contract, NHS England is in the process of removing this obligation. We believe that the BMA and RCGP will welcome the reduced burden of practices not having to complete this survey on a biannual basis now the date of full roll-out has passed.
• The statistics have always been flagged as experimental statistics in the publication.
• In the future, we will be able to report on the number of appointments attended out of core hours using NHS Digital GP Appointment data. Information on appointments was published for the first time by NHS Digital on 6 December 2018 on will continue on a monthly basis.

We have therefore decided to cease this collection and publication.

The extended access to general practice collection was launched during October 2016 in response to the government’s mandate to NHS England which sets out: “To ensure everyone has easier and more convenient access to GP services, including appointments at evenings and weekends”.

The collection had been set up to monitor the availability of pre-bookable appointments in general practice at evenings and weekends.

The completion of this survey was a contractual requirement on general practices. The first collection took place during October 2016. Collections will continue bi-annually until March 2021. The bi-annual data collection was live every March and September , results were published on this page at the end of April and October each year. This publication presented experimental official statistics about the availability of extended access to general practice. The data were published as experimental statistics as they were relatively new and undergoing evaluation.

The information collected was provided for each general practice that responded. Data are also presented by CCG, NHS England local area, region and nationally including practice counts and registered population. Please note that CCG level data that has previously been published for the October 2016 and March 2017 collections is aligned to CCG boundaries that were correct at the time of publication. This historic data was re-mapped to April 2017 CCGs for the September 2017 publication to enable fairer comparisons to be made of change in provision.

Guidance

A guide to completing the extended access to general practice survey – Updated July 2018

Data

September 2018 (Latest release)*
GP Extended Access Commentary – September 2018 (PDF, 762KB)
GP Extended Access Data – September 2018 V1.0 (xlsx, 2MB)
GP Extended Access Data – September 2018 CSV (Pipe delimited CSV, 2MB)
GP Extended Access – pre-release access list (PDF, 200KB)

March 2018 **
GP Extended Access Commentary – March 2018 (PDF, 696KB)
GP Extended Access Data – March 2018 V1.0 (xlsx, 2MB)
GP Extended Access Data – March 2018 CSV (Pipe delimited CSV, 2MB)
GP Extended Access – pre-release access list (PDF, 200KB)

September 2017 **
GP Extended Access Commentary – Sept 2017 V1.0 Final (PDF, 692KB)
GP Extended Access Data – September 2017 V1.1 (XLS, 1,609KB) **
GP Extended Access Data – September 2017 (CSV, 1,686KB)
GP Extended Access – Pre-release access list (Sep 17) (PDF, 200KB

March 2017 ****
GP Extended Access Commentary – March 2017 (PDF, 677KB)
GP Extended Access Data – March 2017 (XLS, 1,575KB)
GP Extended Access Data – March 2017 (CSV, 1,686KB)
GP Extended Access – pre-release access list – March 2017 (PDF, 197KB)

October 2016 ****
GP Extended Access Commentary – October 2016 (REVISED) v1.1 (PDF, 350KB)
GP Extended Access Data – October 2016 (XLS, 1,536K)
GP Extended Access Data – October 2016 (active practice submits and non submits) (CSV, 1,679KB)
GP Extended Access – pre-release access list – October 2016 (PDF, 197KB)

Notes

* Data are aligned to April 2018 CCG boundaries
** Data are aligned to April 2017 CCG boundaries
*** STP codes have been updated for 4 STPs on the time series tab. This has not affected the data or calculations.
**** Data are aligned to pre-April 2017 CCG boundaries

Contact Us

For further information about the published management information, please contact us at:

Analytical Services
NHS England
Quarry House
Leeds
LS2 7UE
Email: england.biannual@nhs.net