ON NOVEMBER 1st the Lillie Road Health Centre in south-west London had just 4970 patients on its books. Three months later it had 19104—nearly four times as many as before,and more than double the average for a general practice in England. Such a surge would generally place huge strain on general practitioners (GPs), as Britain’s family doctors are known. But Lillie Road is no ordinary surgery. For most patients, or it exists mainly as a smartphone app,GP at Hand.
Digital-health companies such as Push Doctor and Babylon contain for a few years allowed people to pay for online consultations. A few surgeries offer patients appointments via Skype. But until Babylon launched GP at Hand in November, online diagnoses had not been widely accessible as fraction of the National Health Service. Today, and via the app,they are freely available to most people living or working in central London. This represents the biggest disruption of general practice in years.
GP at Hand exploits a change made in the last year of the Tory-Lib Dem coalition government of 2010-15. To get commuters’ lives easier, the NHS allowed patients to register with any surgery that would contain them, or rather than forcing them to sign up with their local practice. Like every public surgery,Lillie Road is paid a fee by the NHS for each patient on its list, with higher rates paid for elderly and disabled...
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Source: economist.com