Only one in four patients is now seeing a GP face to face, with the vast majority getting care through telephone and video consultations, research shows. The “revolution” in how patients access family doctors – a direct result of the coronavirus – is revealed in figures collected by the Royal College of GPs. In the four weeks to 12 April, GPs in England undertook 25% less clinical activity than in the same period in 2019. That was due to a combination of factors including many patients staying at home and not seeking GP care at all and also family doctors either being ill themselves or self-isolating because someone in their household was displaying symptoms of the virus. Among patients who sought GP care in that time, only 26% came in to a surgery for an appointment while 71% had their consultation over the phone. That was an almost exact reversal of the patient access patterns seen a year earlier, when 71% attended and just 25% were dealt with remotely. The figures covering around 500 GP practices in England have been collected and shared with the Guardian by the college’s research surveillance centre. “We’ve seen a very rapid and necessary revolution in the way care is delivered in general practice and the way GPs, our teams and our patients have adapted to this has been remarkable”, said Prof Martin Marshall, the college’s chair. Marshall hopes significant numbers of patients will continue to receive remote care once the coronavirus crisis is over, though he stressed that anyone wanting an in-person appointment or needing to receive one for a vaccination, for example, would continue to have one. He also stressed that GP surgeries’ recent dramatic expansion of telephone and video consultations may also encourage patients who are ill with non-Covid ailments to seek help that way rather than shun NHS services altogether. Doctors are increasingly concerned by patients risking their health and even their lives by not seeing a GP, going to A&E or dialling 999 when they develop symptoms such as pain or shortness of breath because they do not want to risk contracting coronavirus or add to NHS staff’s burden. Marshall said too few GPs had secure access to patient records from home, which meant some who self-isolated because of the virus were unable to keep on working. “We are still facing barriers. Many GPs, for example, are telling us they are having technological difficulties with working remotely from home due to a lack of adequate hardware and software. This means that they can’t undertake patient consultations if they are having to self-isolate but still well enough to work, and affects capacity across the rest of the service,” he said. “It’s also imperative that we safeguard the technological advances we have made during the pandemic, so that we can continue to work in different ways in the best interests of patients when we eventually get Covid-19 under control. Having the technological capability to offer remote consultations, where appropriate, will be beneficial for general practice, the wider NHS and most importantly our patients.” He wants ministers and NHS leaders to cover the cost of GP surgeries buying thousands of laptops for doctors and practice nurses so that they can talk to patients on the phone while using a VPN link to look at their medical records. Of the 50% of GPs who have not been working from home recently, 44% were unable to do so because they did not have a laptop, research for the college found.