The last few months in #generalpractice have felt hectic, even by usual #GP standards.

short https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="🧵" title="Thread" aria-label="Emoji: Thread">https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="👇🏻" title="Rückhand Zeigefinger nach unten (heller Hautton)" aria-label="Emoji: Rückhand Zeigefinger nach unten (heller Hautton)"> looks at what appointment/workforce numbers show, with some thoughts on the important bits that those numbers can& #39;t tell us....

1. Total appointment numbers in March were high (28.5m), BUT

2. The number of appointments done by GPs was particularly high (14.7m - the highest since the dataset began).

3. GPs did 2.5m more appointments in March & #39;21 than in Feb (nb there were 3 more working weekdays)

- The absolute number (and %) of F2F appointments is creeping up (15.8m in March) AND

- The number of phone appts in March 21 (11.4m) is also the highest on record.

So, general practice is very busy (by pandemic and pre-pandemic standards).

Given that appointment numbers are https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="🔼" title="Nach oben zeigendes Dreieck" aria-label="Emoji: Nach oben zeigendes Dreieck">https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="🔼" title="Nach oben zeigendes Dreieck" aria-label="Emoji: Nach oben zeigendes Dreieck"> what has happened to workforce? (https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="😬" title="Grimasse schneidendes Gesicht" aria-label="Emoji: Grimasse schneidendes Gesicht">)

In short, not a lot. ie still no signs of the long promised additional GPs.

- FTE GP headcount is up.

- But if you exclude registrars it& #39;s only up 0.4% on March 2020.

- In March 2016 there were 29,564 fully qualified GPs. In March 2021 there were 28,096 (important context)

Worth noting some other interesting trends:

- No. of GP practices continues to decline

- No. of GP partners also declines. Salaried and locum GPs still https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="📈" title="Tabelle mit Aufwärtstrend" aria-label="Emoji: Tabelle mit Aufwärtstrend">

- Direct patient staff numbers increase (except nurses which are static), but PCN workforce dataset still immature.

Some other (important) things to consider:

- This doesn& #39;t include #covidvaccine work, the majority of which (in phase 1) was done by general practice/ #PCNs

- It doesn& #39;t reflect case complexity (and decreased availability/longer waits for secondary care/mental health teams etc)

- It doesn& #39;t reflect the fatigue of working through a pandemic, nor the constant re-organisations, nor all the & #39;hidden& #39; workload (shifts in admin, e-consulting, extra practice meetings to run service changes etc).

This is all important context for #COVIDrecovery

For a more detailed analysis of primary care activity through COVID check out (credit @tlswatt @ElaineKTHF @HealthFdn ) https://www.health.org.uk/news-and-comment/charts-and-infographics/use-of-primary-care-during-the-covid-19-pandemic-may-2021">https://www.health.org.uk/news-and-...