Time-to-event analysis
It was found that most targeted veterans living at home (68 872) had at least one appointment with their primary GP (49 833; 72.3%) in the 3 months post-intervention. The chance of patients seeing their primary GP was higher in the digital group (35 607/45 759, 77.8%) than the postal group (14 226 / 23 113, 61.5%), which is reflected in the Kaplan–Meier curve (
At baseline, the digital group had a higher average mean number of visits in the previous year (an indication of the usual frequency) than the postal group (data not shown). To account for the possible influence of the usual number of visits as a determinant of earlier appointment after intervention, the number of appointments in 2019 was included as a confounder; after adjustment, there was a statistically significant difference between the digital and postal delivery groups on time to first primary GP visit (Coefficients of the Cox modelP