myGP comprises of a patient-facing app and a practice facing set of services including messaging, remote consultation, patient survey, care navigation and triage as well as population-wide patient engagement to increase uptake of screening and vaccination.
In 2020, myGP contributed to improving the health of the British population through signposting everything from Covid 19 symptom awareness and to testing and, from December, vaccination. But, of course, with 180 million patient interactions we did much more than help fighting the virus.
In 2020, we reached 100,000 people tracking their weight on myGP to go with over 40,000 people who track their blood pressure with improved weight and BP control as the result. In the area of medicines optimisation we saw tens of thousands of patients set up medication reminders in addition to helping our users order over three million individual prescription items.
After many years of reluctance, in the second quarter of 2020 British primary care took to online consultation at a remarkable speed. For patients, this resulted in rapid change to accessing healthcare from predominantly physical care to ‘digital first’ services.
In a broad ‘coalition for good’ myGP played a major role alongside other digital providers such as EMIS, TPP, eConsult, Echo and AccuRx in enabling this transformed patient experience. In addition to helping patients access online consultation services we quietly continued to free up primary care capacity and reduce pressure on GP and urgent care services.
We exist to keep people healthy and help transform the patient, carer and clinician experience of healthcare. But health services must be financially sustainable – now more than ever.
Channel switching to optimise patient communication
myGP switched letters and phone calls to text messages which we, through proactive account management and prepaid billing, help the commissioner optimise. Due to accelerating uptake of the patient facing service, the myGP platform switches an increasing number of text messages to free and secure in-app messages. In 2020, myGP users received over 20 million in-app messages, considerably reducing the SMS bill for practices and CCGs. myGP saved the NHS over £35 million in communication costs in 2020.
GP practice efficiency
Every time a patient uses myGP order prescriptions, book or cancel an appointment, access a triage form or view their medical record they eliminate one or several manual tasks for the practice. In 2020 1 drastic reduction in appointment booking was offset but a rapid growth in other digital self-service. Encouraging patients to complete online consultation questionnaires accessed via myGP grew steadily throughout Q4 but the convenience of cancelling booked appointments via reply SMS or on the app remains popular among myGP users. In 2020, myGP freed up appointments to allow an average of 44,000 people per month to see their doctor saving the NHS £21 million.
Urgent care avoidance
Increased urgent capacity in primary care translates to reduced pressure on urgent care. myGP saved £5 million in urgent care visits in 2020. This will increase significantly in 2021 as practices increase activity and life (slowly) returns to normal.
