A study of patients attending without appointments in an urban general practice

Abstract

Objective. To ascertain which social and psychological characteristics are associated with patients attending surgeries without appointments. Design. Prospective study of patients attending an urban centre group practice. Setting. Urban health centre group practice with five doctors and 12,000 patients in an area of high (>20%) unemployment and social deprivation. Patients. All attenders at the open access surgery and one in four consecutive attenders by appointment, selected sequentially from the first three appointments, during 10 days in January 1989. Patients participating in the pilot study, reattending during the study period, or attending antenatal clinics were excluded. Main outcome measures. Patients' attitude to making appointments and reasons for attending, including perception of urgency, with respect to sociodemographic and psychosocial data obtained from a self completed questionnaire before the consultation. Doctors' diagnosis and perception of urgency obtained from a separate questionnaire. Results. 86% (141/172) Of patients attending without appointments and 96% (139/145) with appointments responded to the questionnaire. The need for consultation was considered to be 'very urgent' or 'fairly urgent' in significantly more of the open access group than the appointments group (89%, 124/139 v 66%, 91/138; χ2 = 27.04, df = 3; p < 0.001), although the doctors did not share the same views. Significantly more patients had self limiting conditions of recent onset in the open access than in the appointments group (75%, 101/135 v 48%, 59/123: p < 0.001). Overall, open access attendance was significantly linked with social support (39%, 48/124 v 26%, 32/123; p < 0.05) and with marital separations or intentions to separate (10%, 9/87 v 0/92; 47%, 32/87 v 22%, 20/92 respectively; both p < 0.001), but the doctors recorded significantly fewer psychological and social problems in these patients (p < 0.05). Although almost half those in the appointments group considered that making appointments was inconvenient, more of those in the open access group agreed with this view (47%, 60/129 v 61%, 80/131). Conclusions. There was an important link between social support problems and a negative attitude to making appointments. In our previous experience encouraging patients to make appointments has been unsuccessful; practices serving areas with a high prevalence of social deprivation providing a mixed open access and appointments system may better serve patients' needs.