Patients in more deprived areas of Scotland get less contact time with GP staff, study finds

Patients attending general practices in more socioeconomically deprived areas of Scotland get significantly less contact time than those in more affluent areas, a study involving more than 770 000 patients has found.1

Researchers from the universities of Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, and Bath assessed the amount of care patients received in different parts of Scotland by looking at the number of contacts and the total contact time they had with primary care clinical staff from 2013 to 2016. They found that patients with no long term conditions in more deprived areas received eight minutes’ less contact time than similar patients in more affluent areas.

The biggest difference in care received was seen among patients with three or four long term conditions, as those …