Scottish Cancer Patient Experience Survey 2024: Support and Information for People Receiving Cancer Care

Mode of appointment and travelling to care appointments

Face-to-face appointments

Face-to-face appointments make up 70% of follow-up appointments at national level. Compared to the national level, and for the same type of appointment:

• the percentages of face-to-face appointments are smaller among people living in remote rural areas and remote small towns (60% in remote rural areas and 56% in remote small towns)
• the percentage of face-to-face contacts are larger among patients living in the most deprived areas (77%)
• the percentage of face-to-face appointments did not vary significantly by employment status or by whether people had a long-term condition or not

Telephone appointments

Telephone appointments make up 37% of follow-up appointments at national level. Compared to the national level, and for the same type of appointment:

• people living in remote rural areas receive higher percentages of telephone appointments (50%)

• people living in the most deprived areas receive lower percentages of telephone appointments (30%), compared to all patients and to people living in less deprived areas
• people who are unemployed or looking for work receive lower proportion of telephone appointments (16%) 
• the percentage of telephone appointments did not vary significantly by whether or not people had a long-term condition

Videocall appointments

Videocall appointments make up 3% of follow-up appointments. Compared to the national level, and for the same type of appointment:

• the percentage people who had a videocall appointment is higher among those living in remote rural areas (10%)
• the percentage of people who had a videocall appointment is lower among those living in the most deprived areas (1%)
• the percentage of appointments by videocall did not vary significantly by whether or not people had a long-term condition

Preferred and actual mode of appointment

• people living in the most deprived areas had the highest percentage of face-to-face appointments both for the preferred mode of appointment (83%) and for the actual mode of appointment (77%) for follow-up care
• people living in the most deprived areas had the lowest percentage of telephone appointments for follow-up care for both the preferred mode of appointment (22%) and the actual mode of appointment (30%)
• people living in the most deprived areas had the lowest percentage of videocall appointments for follow-up care for both the preferred and actual mode of appointment (1% respectively)

People living in the most deprived areas had the highest percentage of face-to-face follow-up care appointments for both the preferred mode of appointment (83%) and the actual mode of appointment (77%).

Figure 5. Percentage of follow-up care appointments for which the preferred and actual mode of appointment was face-to-face, by Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD) quintile. Weighted percentages and 95% confidence intervals.

Face-to-face appointments are the preferred mode for follow-up care appointments for 69% of people living in remote rural areas and 79% of people living in large urban areas.

Figure 6. Percentage of follow-up care appointments for which the preferred and actual mode of appointment was face-to-face, by urban rural classification. Weighted percentages and 95% confidence intervals.

Travelling to care

Types of difficulties travelling to receive care

18% of people found it quite difficult or very difficult to travel to appointments relating to their cancer care. Compared to national level, this was higher among:

• people living in the NHS Health boards of Orkney, Shetlands and Western Isles (38%)
• people with head and neck cancer (25%)

Length of travel (24%), cost of travel / parking (14%) and timing of appointments (12%) were the most common difficulties experienced when travelling to care appointments.

Figure 7: Difficulties experienced when travelling to appointments relating to cancer care. Weighted percentages and 95% confidence intervals.

Note: people could tick more than one option and therefore the total percentages can be larger than 100.

In more detail, compared to national level:

Length of travel

• people living in the NHS Health boards of Orkney, Shetland and Western Isles (47%), Dumfries & Galloway (46%), Highland (38%) , and Borders (38%) were more likely to experience “length of travel time” as a difficulty when travelling to cancer care appointments

Cost of travel / parking

• the percentage of people reporting difficulties with costs of travel / parking did not vary across health board of treatment, cancer type, Scottish Index of
  Multiple Deprivation (SIMD), or age-group. All reported similar levels of difficulty to the national level (14%)

Access to suitable transport

• people living in more deprived areas were more likely to report “Access to suitable transport” as a difficultly when travelling to receive care (11% among people living in the most deprived areas, compared to 7% nationally)

Timing of appointment with respect to travel

• people living in NHS Lothian were more likely to report “Timing of appointment with respect to travel (transport unavailable / rush hour etc.)” among difficulties (16%, compared to 12% nationally)

Cost of accommodation

• people living in the NHS boards of Orkney, Shetland and Western Isles (13%), Dumfries and Galloway (7%) and Highland (7%) were more likely to identify the “Cost of accommodation” as a difficultly when travelling for cancer care, compared to 2% at the national level
• people living in the middle (third) quintile of the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (4%) were more likely to identify “Cost of accommodation” as a difficultly when travelling for cancer care, compared to 2% at the national level

Distance travelled to receive care varies by type of care.

Figure 8. How far people travelled for different types of care. Weighted percentages and 95% confidence intervals.

Note: people could tick more than one option and therefore the total percentages can be larger than 100.

Of those travelling to support services for emotional / practical support:

• 62% travelled less than 10 miles
• 36% between 10 and 50 miles
• 3% more than 50 miles
• distance travelled may reflect the level of need, availability of services, and / or travel-related difficulties
• compared with national level, the percentage of those who travelled more than 50 miles to support services was larger among people living in NHS Grampian (8%)