Access to Primary Care Services report

The public told us that they were concerned about access to GPs in both normal surgery hours and for access outside hours following bad experiences of accessing GP appointments. We merged the two issues to look at access to GP services generally as our second priority area of research and engagement.

There are 59 General Practitioner surgeries across Walsall. The objective of the report was to establish how the public booked appointments, whether they found their GP service accessible in terms of getting an appointment when needed if they would prefer extended surgery opening times if the lack of appointments at GP surgeries impacted on use of A&E and Urgent Care Centres in the area. It also looked at whether there were any influence by demographics on the use of A&E or Urgent Care Centres, the demographic information used was gender, location, ethnicity and disability.