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NHS Direct and GP appointment booking

In early February 2011, there was media coverage in the national and health professional press about NHS Direct taking over GP appointment booking. Some of the reports were confusing and inaccurate.

The coverage originated from a paper presented at NHS Direct’s January 2011 board meeting about its early engagement work with emerging GP consortia. The media picked up on a discussion NHS Direct had had with GP consortium ESyDoc around the different services it may be able to pilot with them, including the 111 service and trials of in-hours triage and booking systems. Journalists speculated on how this could be rolled out on a larger scale, claiming NHS Direct could be providing this service to ‘hundreds of thousands of patients’.

In truth, NHS Direct is in very early discussions with a small number of GPs about a whole range of services that it could potentially work with them to provide. It is certainly not planning to set up a national GP booking service and won’t be doing anything without first testing how the service works for patients.

Dr Brian Gaffney, NHS Direct Medical Director, explains:
“Any service that we develop would be in response to what local commissioners want, and only if we could provide a good service for patients. The main focus of our early engagement with the emerging GP consortia is to discuss different ways in which we could work together in the future.

"Early discussions we’ve had with GP consortia are about a range of telephone and web-based services we could offer to support practices and meet the needs of people who want to access healthcare differently.

"These talks are distinct from discussions with local commissioners about NHS 111. The specification for the roll-out of the 111 service is being developed by the NHS in partnership with the Department of Health, for NHS Direct, along with other providers, to deliver.”

To find out more about NHS Direct’s initial discussions with GP consortia, read more about the topic in our Latest news section.