Healthcare Barriers, Health Outcomes, and Annual Health Checks for Autistic Adults: A Cross-Sectional Study of General Practitioners’ Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices

Various physical conditions appear with greater frequency in autistic individuals in comparison to non-autistic people and can lead to higher morbidity, lower quality of life, and lower life expectancy. A voluntary primary care annual health check (AHC) scheme is in place in the UK for patients with intellectual disabilities (ID), some of whom will also be autistic. We report the results of a study involving an online questionnaire disseminated via Twitter to investigate knowledge, attitudes, and practices of UK General Practitioners (GPs) concerning barriers and enablers to autistic adults accessing primary healthcare services. Amongst other matters, we found that (1) autistic people who are independent for the most part face the greatest struggles accessing primary healthcare, and (2) advocates of AHCs for autistic adults face the twin challenges of convincing extremely busy GPs to prioritise AHCs, and of advocacy on behalf of people with other conditions.