
AXA Doctor at Hand
With our AXA Doctor at Hand service, delivered by Doctor Care Anywhere, everything they need is in one place, from booking appointments and seeing a GP when it suits; to having a specialist referral sent straight to our Fast Track Appointments team.
We’ve all become familiar with worrying news of lengthening waiting times for GP appointments. But it still comes as a shock to see a prediction from the Royal College of GPs (RCGP) that by 2020, patients will be forced to wait over a week on nearly 100 million occasions a year.
The RCGP’s analysis also warns that that there will be an increase of occasions when patients won’t be able to see a GP at all, to 52 million per year.
At AXA Health we’ve always firmly believed that fast access to diagnosis, advice and treatment matters to people’s health, so we’re especially concerned to see this deeply worrying analysis. Despite developing a number of pathways where a GP referral may no longer always be required (e.g. AXA Health’s Working Body and Stronger Minds pathways), the fact remains that a GP open referral is still a necessity for the majority of initial diagnosis and subsequent health insurance claims. So, we are at risk of devaluing private healthcare if we don’t provide options for employers and individuals to more easily access that first, essential part of the patient journey.
AXA Doctor at Hand (our online private GP service) has helped employers to do exactly that. But it has not just been about helping our clients get greater value from private health insurance. It is also helping employers more effectively manage day to day absenteeism and presentism so often caused by the distractions, hassle and delay of booking appointments, attending consultations, picking up prescriptions and waiting for the paperwork if next steps are needed.