Access to Primary Care and Digital Exclusion

On this occasion, the Healthwatch have carried out a project that looks at the experiences of people who were more likely to be digitally excluded than the general population in accessing primary care during the Covid-19 pandemic and its associated restrictions. Unlike the HWE project we did not interview GP practice staff as at the time the project was being undertaken local GP practice staff were taken up with the rollout of the Covid vaccination programme and felt unable to take part. We found that booking appointments in the first instance had sometimes been difficult for participants although for many accessing GP appointments could be difficult before the pandemic but there had been changes to how appointments could be accessed with telephone booking being the main method.