Primary care consultations in the UK between 2006 and 2015: An analysis of electronic health records

Primary care accounts for the majority of patient contact within the NHS. Over time medical science and healthcare needs change, which may lead to differences in how patients are treated in primary care for good or ill. In this study over 700 million consultations were analysed over a 10 year period between 2006 and 2015 inclusively to examine the trends in how people access primary care. The number of consultations per person per year initially increased in the first two years from 5.81 to 5.92, an increase of 0.11(0.10 to 0.12 95% CI) before declining to 3.7 by 2015, a decrease of 2.21 from the peak in 2008(2.20 to 2.23 95% CI). Consultations were increasingly handled by health care assistants instead of Nurses and GPs, and increased slightly in duration for all types of staff. This reduction in number of consultations is theorized to be a consequence of the 2008 financial crisis and its aftermath, further research is recommended on the impact of economic recessions and austerity policies on health care provision.