Modern outpatient departments offer a wide range of treatment services, diagnostic tests and minor surgical procedures.
It is normally integrated with the in-patient services and staffed by consultant physicians and surgeons who also attend inpatients in the wards(OPD).
The Royal College of Physicians said that UK outpatient clinics were stuck "in the 18th Century" and an expensive waste of time and money.
They wanted more use of remote monitoring, telephone and video consultations and senior nurses running clinics closer to people's homes.
The Attend Anywhere digital healthcare service was installed across NHS organisations in England in March 2020 with backing from NHSX and by May 2020 had been used for more than 79,000 consultations.
[7] An NHS England review in August 2022 reported that the number of patients moved or discharged to PIFU pathways across the 34 providers monitored increased from 53,000 to 118,000 in the nine months up to May 2022.