England (Commonwealth Union) – The pandemic rearranged life as we know it, with lockdowns devastating small business. GP appointments for international migrants had also been impacted when contrasted to UK born residents, according to a University College London (UCL) study indicating that international migrants had less appointments prior to the pandemic, with these differences enhanced during the first eight months of the pandemic. This was particularly evident for migrant children, migrants who did not have English as their first language and migrants from racial minorities. Telephone appointments were affected at a higher rate than face-to-face appointments, mainly in London.
The study utilized the Clinical Practice Research Datalink, to evaluate the primary care utilization of 130,000 migrants in England both before 4 January 2015 to 7 March 2020 and during the COVID-19 pandemic from 29 March to 27 December 2020. It saw that prior to the pandemic, migrants had an overall 6% less rate of appointments compared to non-migrants. However, when the pandemic took place migrants had 14% less face-to-face appointments and 24% less telephone appointments than non-migrants.
The capital was also greatly impacted and although migrants in London had slightly higher face-to-face appointments and similar numbers of telephone appointments than non-migrants prior to COVID-19, the 1st 8 months of the pandemic demonstrated that the latter drop by 22% contrasted with the pre-pandemic ratio of appointments comparing migrants and non-migrants.
“As GP practices continue to use remote appointments, concerted efforts are needed to ensure all GP services are accessible to migrants,” said Professor Robert Aldridge, who is the corresponding author of UCL Institute of Health Informatics. “Clinical commissioning groups should address factors such as professional interpreting and translation services, and culturally responsive service delivery plans – alongside improving migrants’ knowledge of their healthcare entitlements and supporting migrants to make informed decisions about healthcare use during the pandemic and beyond.”
