Access to health and care

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On March 17 2020 NHS England set out plans to immediately reprioritise services to free-up inpatient and critical care capacity. This was in order to prepare for, and respond to, anticipated large numbers of COVID-19 patients who might have needed breathing support.

All non-urgent elective operations were postponed, screening programmes and health checks were paused, staff were redeployed to priority areas, and many services changed to remote consultations, using video, telephone and other technologies.

Services have slowly started to return to normal however there are still many who are waiting for services, and even people saying they were themselves delaying accessing treatment for reasons such as “I don’t want to burden the NHS” and “I’m worried about me or my family catching coronavirus”.

We’d like to know if the changes to the health system have affected you.

What has worked well about telephone or digital services, and what has not worked so well?

Have you delayed getting treatment or are you waiting for a procedure or a service to start running again?


On March 17 2020 NHS England set out plans to immediately reprioritise services to free-up inpatient and critical care capacity. This was in order to prepare for, and respond to, anticipated large numbers of COVID-19 patients who might have needed breathing support.

All non-urgent elective operations were postponed, screening programmes and health checks were paused, staff were redeployed to priority areas, and many services changed to remote consultations, using video, telephone and other technologies.

Services have slowly started to return to normal however there are still many who are waiting for services, and even people saying they were themselves delaying accessing treatment for reasons such as “I don’t want to burden the NHS” and “I’m worried about me or my family catching coronavirus”.

We’d like to know if the changes to the health system have affected you.

What has worked well about telephone or digital services, and what has not worked so well?

Have you delayed getting treatment or are you waiting for a procedure or a service to start running again?


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  • Accessing health and care services

    over 2 years ago
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    We’d like to know if the changes to the health system have affected you. 

    What has worked well about telephone or digital services, and what has not worked so well?

    Have you delayed getting treatment or are you waiting for a procedure or a service to start running again?

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Page last updated: 26 Oct 2021, 03:12 PM