On 1 October 2025, GP practices in England became contractually obliged to make online consultation tools available to patients throughout the practice’s contractual core hours (Monday –Friday 8am-6.30pm).
GPC England agreed these contractual changes in February 2025 but with the important proviso that ‘necessary safeguards’ would be in place prior to the 1 October implementation date.
Over the following months the GPC England Team met NHSE and DHSC many times, to explain our significant concerns about these changes, including their potential workload impact, and the need to develop safeguards including ways to prevent patients from erroneously submitting urgent requests or queries online. We also emphasised the need for practices to be able to temporarily suspend online access if overwhelmed by demand or struggling with capacity, such as during periods of staff sickness. However, these concerns have not been properly addressed and instead totally inadequate ‘safeguards’ have been suggested by NHSE and DHSC.
As a result, on 1 October, GPC England announced a dispute with the Government over these unsafe contract changes. GPC England wants to understand the impact of these changes on GP practices. This will help us in terms of ongoing negotiations with government and making progress with our dispute.
The survey should take no more than 10 minutes to complete and will close on Weds 12 November. Your responses are confidential and will be anonymised for analysis
Thank you very much for your engagement.
Complete survey https://www.research.net/r/onlineconsultssurvey