What is the impact of constrained access to primary care on health-related quality of life?
What are we trying to do?
We aim to explore the health-related quality of life effects of jobs that allow workers to have time off to attend healthcare appointments.
What is it important?
Timely access to healthcare has implications for health through early diagnosis and management of long-term conditions. However, when healthcare services are provided during traditional working hours, this limits workers’ ability to attend appointments.
Employment is a major time constraint for many people when choosing how to allocate their time between different tasks and activities. Flexible working conditions can lessen this constraint by allowing individuals to have more control over how to allocate their non-sick time between work, health investments, and leisure
In the UK, there is no statutory requirement to allow employees to attend healthcare appointments during work hours, but some employers choose to allow this type of flexibility.
This work will provide a vaulable insight into the impacts that constrained access to primary care has on health-related quality of life.
How are we doing it?
We are using data (restriucted to adults aged between 18-64 years of age) from the General Practice Patient Survey (GPPS) a large national survey of individuals registered with each general practice in England. Around 700,000 individuals respond to the survey annually.
We are using a range of statistical methods to analyse the GPPS, using EQ-5D-5L, which is a health-related quality of life measure that is recommended for general population surveys and is sensitive to small differences among reasonably healthy individuals. It focusses self-reported data around 5 aspects of a persons quality of life:
- mobility
- self-care
- usual activities
- pain/discomfort
- anxiety/depression.
Findings
We expect findings to be available from summer 2025
Contact information
Senior Programme Lead
Mike Spence