Neil Hamilton, MS for Mid & West Wales, and Leader of UKIP Wales has welcomed news that digital consultations have been extended to dental practices, opticians and community pharmacies.
Mr Hamilton, a member of the Climate Change, Environment and Rural Affairs committee, was commenting after the extension was announced following the successful roll-out of the service in primary care, community and secondary care during the coronavirus pandemic.
He said: “I have long been an advocate of digital appointments for GP surgeries across Wales, so I welcome this news.
“It is absolutely vital for patients to be able to access key services during this crisis and the expansion of the scheme to include, pharmacies, dentists and opticians, will undoubtedly help this to happen.
“Video consultations are already running very successfully, allowing people to keep key appointments, whilst maintaining social distance, which will continue to be so important.
“By allowing pharmacists, opticians and dentists to use video links for consultations this will also help reduce the spread of COVID-19 as fewer people will have to attend places in person, thus reducing the risk of exposure for both patients and clinicians.”
To date over 6,400 GP video consultations have been undertaken and over 8,800 video consultations to support community and secondary care. 92% of patients who have used the service have rated it as excellent, really good or good.
Video consultation has enabled essential services to continue, whilst also protecting patients and NHS employees from increased risk of infection. Evaluation of the service has shown that the video consultation has saved 36,000 miles of travel and 1,200 hours of travel time. It has also reduced Co2 emissions by nine tons.
A pilot will now take place this month to extend the services to dentistry, optometry and community pharmacies who have all experienced an increase in demand for additional services, including people seeking advice for common ailments. The introduction of social distancing has also meant that some services have not taken place and video consultation will help support the reintroduction of these services.
Video consultation will enable community pharmacies to provide advice for common ailments and emergency contraception services. It will allow pharmacies to conduct Discharge Medicines Review and give support for people who want to stop smoking.
In dentistry, video consultations will support pre-visit consultations to get an understanding of the patients’ medical history and allow a clinical assessment.
Optometry will benefit from video consultation by using it for pre-visit check-ups on a patient’s medical history. It will also support triage to examine a person’s eyelids. Video consultation can also be used to allow a specialist ophthalmologist to join the consultation call.
