Buckinghamshire Council<\/a> health scrutiny meeting, she explained that some patients currently receive a further telephone consultation after contacting NHS 111, before being booked to see someone in person.\n<\/p>\n\n Clinicians had identified groups of patients whose assessment outcomes showed that 70 per cent or more needed a face-to-face appointment that day.\n<\/p>\n
\n For selected patients, the pilot would replace that further telephone consultation with a direct booking, allowing the same GP to assess them in person.\n<\/p>\n
\n Dr Avery said: \u201cThe same GP is going to be managing it but they\u2019ll have been booked in to be seen directly at Wycombe rather than receiving a telephone call.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cSo in that way, we\u2019re able to create additional capacity with existing resource.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n She added: \u201cWe anticipate from the data that we\u2019ve got that that\u2019s going to be about 20 to 30 additional face-to-face appointments each day.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n The explanation came after Cllr Larisa Townsend asked how the planned expansion would work, how many appointments it would provide and whether staff had been recruited.\n<\/p>\n
\n She also asked how the increase would compare with the unmet need identified last winter.\n<\/p>\n
\n Dr Avery said there were no additional resources available, so the aim was to use those already in place more efficiently.\n<\/p>\n
\n The initial pilot would run during normal working hours, Monday to Friday.\n<\/p>\n
\n An initial evaluation is planned for November, with hopes of expanding the approach during winter if it delivers the expected benefits.\n<\/p>\n
\n Dr Avery said the intention would then be to extend the model into out-of-hours services and other areas, including the A&E front door at Stoke Mandeville Hospital.\n<\/p>\n
\n Buckinghamshire\u2019s winter plan identifies increasing face-to-face capacity at Wycombe\u2019s Urgent Treatment Centre as a priority.\n<\/p>\n
\n It says the change is driven by evidence of increased demand and should reduce repeated handling of cases, helping patients reach the right clinician and place of care sooner.\n<\/p>\n
\n The centre treats patients with minor illnesses and injuries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The scheme, due to begin this week, would allow selected NHS 111 patients to be booked directly into…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":793381,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[102,2960,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-793380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=793380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793380\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/793381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=793380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=793380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=793380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}