About this release

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

This exploratory work aims to illustrate the type of activity information captured within GP clinical systems. Not all activity is recorded on the clinical systems and information on the complexity or duration of the activity is currently unavailable. Therefore, the activity reported does not represent all the work happening within a primary care setting.

Please note the data contained within this visualisation is not directly comparable to other work on GP activity ongoing in NHS England, or NHS Wales (NWIS), due to differences in methodology of counting and classifying GP activity.

The data remains subject to change and monthly figures and comparisons should be used with caution.

An in-practice dashboard is also available for practices to allow them to view their activity data down to individual staff member and undertake quality work; guidance documents have also been developed and issued to encourage more uniform recording practice. Engagement with practices is ongoing to investigate and solve data anomalies. Data quality indicators are being developed to allow better understanding of the data.

Previous amendments to this publication (March 2024)

During the In-hours activity pilot, an issue was identified for EMIS users that resulted in the recording of blood test results being automatically misclassified as face-to-face activity in the 'Direct' encounter class, rather than administrative activity in the 'Indirect' encounter class. Alongside this a separate issue was identified relating to the processing of EMIS activity data prior to May 2023, which resulted in the double counting of some activity.

Both of these issues were corrected in the March 2024 edition of this publication. Due to a large number of practice mergers and closures over the last 18 months there are fluctuations in the revised data compared to the previously published data.

A visualisation comparing the previously published counts with the corrected counts was added to March's publication and a comparison report was also published detailing the impact of these changes.   An additional data quality was included to show variations in counts from month to month (alert charts) and highlight unmapped and undefined consultation and health care professional types.

Main points

In February 2024, the total level of activity in GP practices which returned data was approximately 7.3 million encounters. This is 3.4% lower than the 12-month rolling average activity (Mar. 23 to Feb. 24).

The chart show time series data indicating the level of GP activity by different encounter classes spanning January 2018 to February 2024

Close

In February 2024, 38% of encounters were classified as Direct. The data suggests that 80% of these Direct encounters were physical appointments and 20% were 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 28 May 2024.