Elderly the minority in extended hours GP attendance

Research has uncovered that older people account for only seven per cent of primary care access hub visits compared with 33 per cent of in-hours GP contacts.

The study compared 3.1 million primary care in-hours contacts with 32,000 hub attendances over a six month period between December 2015 and May 2016. An evaluation of the extended hours scheme in East London found that the average age of attendees was 27, compared with 56 for in-hours care.

The report also found that the use of the hubs did relieve some pressure on A&E departments, with the presence of the hubs ‘diverting some people who would otherwise choose to attend A&E, or who may have been sent to A&E by NHS 111, away from this service’.

Researchers said: “The relative scale of these figures suggests that we would be unlikely to observe an impact of the out-of-hours hubs within the in-hours data. We noted above that the age distribution of attendees at hubs and of attendees at in-hours primary care is different, with people aged 65 or over making only seven per cent of hub appointments compared with 33 per cent of in-hours GP contacts.”