Official figures contradict BMA claim that GPs deliver 200,000 appointments per week in Northern Ireland
Official figures have contradicted claims by a doctors’ union that “200,000 appointments are delivered every week” by GPs in Northern Ireland – they show only 123,926 telephone or face to face encounters between doctors and their patients in June.
The British Medical Association (BMA) – which is in dispute with the Department of Health (DoH) over funding – used the figure to make the claim that “10% of the population [is] seeing their GP every week”.
However, the latest DoH figures obtained by the News Letter show that the figures relied on show “encounters” not appointments – and includes contacts with staff outside GPs practices, such as counsellors and pharmacists.
They also reveal that the majority of contacts between patients and GPs are carried out by telephone rather than face to face.
Patients can also be counted twice on any given day if, for example, a patient telephones their GP practice and is triaged by a member of the clinical team, resulting in a face-to-face encounter with a member of the clinical team on the same day.
The BMA is currently backing industrial action for a “better 2025/2026 contract offer” from the health service, arguing GPs need more core funding to protect the service. Proposed action includes limiting the number of daily consultations with patients and ending the “completion of unfunded paperwork”.
In response to a series of questions from the News Letter, DoH said that the data it collects is “based on the numbers of encounters (not appointments) as recorded in Practice Clinical Systems by the corresponding healthcare professional role. An encounter refers to a recorded interaction in the clinical record between a patient and the corresponding healthcare professional role. The data only presents face to face and telephone encounters. There are other encounter types recorded in the clinical record”.
The DoH data was extrapolated from submissions by 252 practices to estimate activity/encounters across all practices in Northern Ireland.
Last month, in a statement on a vote in favour of “taking collective action for a better 2025/2026 contract offer”, the BMA claimed that doctors conduct 200,000 appointments per week.
It said that GPs have faced “relentless criticism that patients are unable to see their GP or get an appointment, despite the Department’s own data showing this is not the case; 200,000 appointments are delivered every week, that is 10% of the population seeing their GP every week”.
The News Letter asked DoH a series of questions about the data referred to in the BMA statement. Officials said that the “weekly average number (for the month of June) of all encounters across all GP Practices was approximately 193,081 per week.
“Encounters by GPs only for the same time period was approximately 123,926 per week”, a DoH spokesperson said.
Asked if these figures are solely for GPs, or if they included contacts with other practice team members, the department said the overall figure includes contacts with nurses, multidisciplinary teams and other non-practice clinical staff.
The department said that the data “does not reflect all activity carried out in General Practice, only those recorded as encounters, nor does it take account of how long the encounter lasts or the complexity”.
Asked whether an individual patient be counted twice on any given day, DoH said: “Yes, if a patient telephones the practice and is triaged by a member of the clinical team that results in a face-to-face encounter with a member of the clinical team on the same day. (Telephone encounter followed by a face-to-face encounter)”.
Asked about the breakdown between face to face and telephone contacts, DoH said that for all recorded contacts there were 115,287 (59.7%) weekly face to face contacts and 77,794 (40.3%) telephone in June. For GP encounters only there were 55,812 (45%) weekly face to face contacts and 68,114 (55%) telephone.
The BMA has not yet commented on the figures.