What About Saving the Time of GP Partners?
Balancing access, safety, and sustainability in NHS Primary Care
When NHS primary care makes the headlines, the focus is usually on patient access — faster appointments, digital triage, and extended hours.
But what about the time of GP partners themselves?
Behind every 10-minute consultation is a mountain of invisible work — results checking, document filing, training, audits, meetings, and leadership. Yet national conversations rarely ask: how do we give doctors time back?
GP partners need time not just to see patients but to think, decide, train, and run their practices safely. Without protecting this time, improved access is unsustainable.
The Access Paradox
Increasing appointments without addressing the GP workload only shifts the pressure elsewhere.
Many GPs now work 10–12 hours daily, often spending evenings reviewing test results or signing off repeat prescriptions.
If the NHS truly wants better access, it must also protect clinician capacity. Time saved through automation or standardisation can be reinvested in patient care, reflection, and clinical leadership.
How to Save Time and Costs — While Improving Care
Here are proven ways GP partners can reclaim time and reduce cost — without compromising safety or patient outcomes.
Automate the Routine
Automation isn’t about replacing doctors; it’s about removing repetitive admin.
Tasks such as pathology filing, sending patient messages, or triaging “normal” results can be safely handled by intelligent systems like MyBotGP.
It mirrors human logic and follows defined safety rules, ensuring consistent, auditable outcomes.
Standardise Processes
Every clinician filing results differently adds unnecessary variation. By enforcing standard rules, thresholds, and workflows, practices can ensure safer, faster, and more consistent outcomes.
Use the Whole Team
Pharmacists, nurses, and admin staff play vital roles in managing routine workflows. Digital tools help distribute tasks effectively, freeing GPs to focus on diagnosis, decisions, and patient contact.
Protect Decision-Making Time
Protected admin blocks and batching work reduce fragmentation. Fewer interruptions mean better concentration — vital for safe, thoughtful medicine.
Smarter IT, Not More IT
Integration is everything. Tools that sit natively within EMIS Web, SystmOne, or Docman save hours by eliminating double entry and switching between systems.
The Hidden Burden of “Normal” Pathology Results
Every day, GPs check hundreds of lab results. Even those marked “normal” often require review — because “normal” doesn’t always mean “safe”.
- ➢ Many GPs spend 25–30 minutes daily reviewing “normal” results.
- ➢ Across a 4-partner practice, that equals 8–10 GP hours per week.
- ➢ Over a year, that’s roughly 400 hours — about 70–80 GP working days lost.
Those are days that could be spent on patient care, training, or innovation. But skipping the review isn’t an option — safety demands oversight.
That’s where safe automation comes in.
How MyBotGP Works
MyBotGP automates pathology result filing safely within NHS Primary Care workflows.
It doesn’t just mark results as “normal” — it applies a comprehensive set of checks before deciding whether to file or escalate.
- ➢ Rule-based engine: Validates results against local thresholds, trends, and reference ranges.
- ➢ Contextual awareness: Reviews medication, history, and previous results for potential risks.
- ➢ Escalation logic: Flags any anomalies or context-dependent cases for GP review.
- ➢ Audit trail: Every decision is logged for governance and safety audits.
- ➢ Integration: Works inside EMIS, SystmOne, and Docman; hosted on secure NHS Cloud infrastructure.
This approach combines safety, standardisation, and workload relief — giving GP partners confidence and control.
The Impact for GP Partners
Practices using MyBotGP have reported measurable results:
OutcomeTypical Impact
GP time saved~30 minutes per GP per day → ≈ 78 working days annually
Cost reduction: Fewer locum hours, less overtime, and lower admin costs
Patient safety: Consistent rule-based filing, reduced variation
Morale: Less repetitive work, more focus on patients and leadership
Instead of sacrificing safety for speed, MyBotGP enables both.
It helps GPs work smarter, not longer.
Why GP Partner Time Matters
Protecting GP partner time isn’t a luxury — it’s a sustainability issue.
Burnout and early retirement among partners are rising sharply. Every hour wasted on avoidable admin is an hour lost from patient care.
By freeing time through intelligent automation, practices can create a virtuous cycle:
Fewer routine tasks → More clinical focus → Better care → Stronger teams → Lower costs.
Freeing GP time improves patient access by restoring the clinician capacity needed to meet demand safely.
A Call to Rebalance the Conversation
The NHS digital agenda rightly emphasises access and innovation. But we must now extend that to protecting GP partner capacity.
Access without clinician time is a hollow victory.
Technologies like MyBotGP demonstrate that digital automation can enhance, rather than erode, the human aspect of medicine.
When the routine is consistently and safely looked after, GPs regain the bandwidth to think, teach, and connect — delivering care that’s both faster and better.
So next time we talk about “improving access,” let’s also ask: What about saving the time of GP partners?