Di-Facto patient survey: Digital facilitation to support patient access to online services in primary care

Conference:

SAPC ASM 2023 - Brighton

Talk Code:

1C.5

Presenter:

Gary Abel

Co-authors:

Jeff Lambert, Abodunrin Aminu, John Campbell, Carol Bryce, Chris Clark, Mayam Gomez-Cano, Nada Khan, Nurunnahar Akter, Caroline Jenkinson, Helen Atherton, Rachel Winder

Author institutions:

University of Exeter, University of Bath, University of Warwick

Problem

Adoption of online services by general practices accelerated especially rapidly during the Covid pandemic. While welcomed by some, engaging with services online may be difficult for others. Little is known about what processes, procedures, and personnel are employed in general practice to support NHS patients in using online services (what we have termed digital facilitation) and patient’s views regarding this support. Here we explore digital facilitation from the patient’s perspective.

Approach

A patient survey was developed through iterative workshops. 12,822 patients were invited from 62 practices who had already responded to a practice staff survey. Practices with higher deprivation were requested to invite more patients than those with medium or low deprivation (285, 220 and 150 patients respectively). Logistic regression models were used to investigate the association between awareness and use of digital facilitation efforts and various patient factors.

Findings

3,054 (23.8%) patients responded. Low percentages (≤17%) of responders were aware of practices’ digital facilitation efforts for all modes of facilitation except for emails/text messages (28%), with fewer patients making use of those efforts. Only 30% of patients reported being told about online services and 13% report being helped to use them. Adjusted logistic regression models show that older patients are less likely to be aware of or use digital facilitation, and are also less likely to be told about/helped to use online services. However, the opposite was true for non-white patients, those for whom English was not their first language and those in receipt of repeat prescriptions.

Consequences

Most patients are not aware of their general practices efforts to support them in the use of online services. Whilst it may be concerning that this support is not reaching older patients in particular, it is welcome that other potentially vulnerable groups are more likely to be supported.

Submitted by:

Gary Abel

Funding acknowledgement:

This study is funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Health and Social Care Delivery Research Programme 128268. The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the NIHR or the Department of Health and Social Care.