About this release

This release by Public Health Scotland (PHS) presents General Practice (GP) activity data extracted from approximately 94% of practices across Scotland from January 2018 to the end of October 2024 by NHS board and Health and Social Care Partnership (HSCP).

Information is provided on the number of encounters which were recorded each month by the general practice team, both clinical and non-clinical. Encounters are classified as direct or indirect. Direct encounters involve some form of direct contact for clinical care between clinical staff and a patient e.g. face to face or telephone consultations. Indirect encounters include any activity not involving direct contact with patients e.g. reviewing prescriptions, clinical and non-clinical administration.

Main points

• In October 2024, the total number of General Practice encounters recorded by the whole practice team was approximately 8.3 million. This is an increase of 905,047 encounters (12.3%) compared to September 2024 and an increase of 466,671 encounters (6%) compared to October 2023.

The x axis is the date, starting January 2018 in annual increments to January 2024. The traces continue until October 24. The y axis is the Monthly Activity (Count). There are four traces representing different encounter classes: a magenta trace which shows External Direct activity, a light purple trace which shows Indirect activity, a purple trace which shows Direct activity and a grey trace which shows Undefined activity. There is one vertical line: the line indicates March 2020 when the pandemic was declared and lockdown introduced. Both Indirect and Direct encounter classes of data activity counts fluctuate across the period with a similar pattern. Indirect has the greatest activity of all encounter classes, then Direct, Undefined and External Direct.

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Figure 1: Monthly Trend (12-month moving mean) by Encounter Class

• In October 2024, approximately 3 million encounters (36.7%) were classified as Direct. This is an increase of 283,381 encounters (10.3%) compared to September 2024 and an increase of 36,682 encounters (1.2%) compared to October 2023.
• Approximately 2.5 million (83.9%) of Direct encounters were recorded as physical and 0.5 million (16.1%) were recorded as virtual

Note: Full definitions of the encounter class are available on the dashboard.

Further information

Data presented in the visualisation are subject to change.

Where it is identified data are excluded from that months release due to technical issues, these data will be updated the following month.

The next release of this publication will be 04 February 2025.