Political pressure to increase access to primary care is growing. In the face of ever increasing demand for healthcare, this increase in primary care aims to reduce the burden on urgent and secondary care services. Also part of a broader driver towards establishing a seven-day NHS service, this would require general practice surgeries to extend their opening hours beyond their current obligatory 52.5 h per week. However, benchmarking with other European systems demonstrates that normal in-hours general practice provision in England already exceeds that of most other European countries. Furthermore, patients in England express greater satisfaction with primary care access relative to many other European countries. The reality of demand for extension of general practice opening hours in England remains unclear and evidence about whether additional primary care access decreases accident and emergency department use limited and inconclusive. Before significant investment in further extension of general practice opening hours, more research is required to understand the effects of changes to in- and out-of-hours primary care provision on access and emergency use.

Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine

2018

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0141076818755557?url_ver=Z39.88-2003&rfr_id=ori:rid:crossref.org&rfr_dat=cr_pub%3dpubmed

J R Soc Med