Estimated number of appointments attended at general practices by combination of mode, practitioner type and reason for appointment, and month

Main information

Designation: Official statistics in development
Data provider: Digital Health and Care Wales (DHCW)
Data source: Primary Care Information Portal (PCIP)
Time period covered: October 2021 to March 2026

Overview

Summary of dataset and variables

This shows the monthly estimated number of attended appointments by combination of mode of consultation, type of practitioner and reason for appointment, measure (number of attended appointments or average number of attended appointments per working day) and area (health board and cluster).

Data collection or calculation

The term ‘appointment’ refers to all patient-related activities recorded in a general practice’s appointment book. The large majority of activities recorded will be traditional appointments where a patient has a consultation with a GP, nurse or other health professional. The term will also capture some other activities which staff perform for patients, but without having a consultation (such as a medicine review) if it’s recorded in the appointment book. It will not capture any patient related activities which are not recorded in the appointment book.

As part of the activity data quality improvement project of the Quality Assurance and Improvement Framework (QAIF) for 2021-22, practices were requested to categorise appointments by mode, type of practitioner and reason for consultation using the PCIP. It became a requirement for practices to undertake this exercise for data from July 2022 onwards.

Face-to-face appointments are those where a patient physically attends the practice. Remote appointments are those conducted over the telephone or through video call. Home visit appointments will include appointments where practice staff visit the patient’s residence which includes communal living establishments such as nursing homes.

GP and independent prescriber appointments should capture appointments with all GP types including GP registrars, as well as appointments with staff such as advanced nurse practitioners, pharmacists and physiotherapists who are qualified to prescribe as defined by NHS Wales Shared Services Partnership.

Nurse, allied health professional, or other clinical role appointments should capture appointments with clinical staff who are registered with a professional body (for example, nurses registered with the Nursing and Midwifery Council) but who are not qualified to prescribe. It should not count interactions with administrative or non-clinical support staff.

Appointments that are classified by their reason as chronic, planned, or non-acute conditions are typically those for pre-existing conditions which have been ongoing for a longer period of time and are undergoing chronic disease management; while urgent or acute conditions are typically those which have occurred over the short-term. A patient’s reason for an appointment may be complex and staff recording this information should use their best judgement when categorising the reason for appointment. Typically this would be done by an administrative member of staff for clinical reasons and be subject to change, following advice from the health professional providing the appointment or practice manager.

Statistical quality

The data submitted to the Primary Care Information Portal (PCIP) is not routinely revised, but practices are able to retrospectively re-categorise appointment data for mode of consultation, type of consultation and reason for appointment at any time. There is no restriction on how far back practices can revise data and any revised data would be included onto the PCIP the following day.

It is planned that Welsh Government statisticians will process the previous 12 months data with every quarterly statistical publication. This means that data published for the previous 12 months may be revised. Any large revisions will be highlighted in the statistical release and data tables.

Published data, from time periods longer than 12 months before the reference period will not be revised unless an error is discovered. If this does occur the revision will also be highlighted in the statistical release and data tables."

There is an ongoing programme to roll-out a single appointment system to all practices in Wales, that is planned for completion by summer 2026. This means that some practices have transitioned systems around the data reference dates, which may lead to additional data quality issues. Where data quality issues are identified, they are shared with Digital Health and Care Wales who work with health boards and practices to improve data quality. The statistics for the most recent quarter are based on the data as initially recorded. Erroneous data are usually edited in the source data after publication and statistics are then revised in the subsequent quarter’s publication.

Data for January to September 2025 have been revised in line with our planned revisions policy. There were small changes at Wales level with changes ranging between 0.1% and 2.7% for appointments data.

The data for April to December 2025 will be revised in the next publication.

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Organisation: Welsh Government
Contact email: stats.healthinfo@gov.wales

Estimated number of appointments attended at general practices by combination of mode, practitioner type and reason for appointment, and month

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