Findings from the GP Patient Survey 2024 run by Ipsos on behalf of NHS England have been published, assessing patient experiences of healthcare services provided by GP practices, including access, making contact with practices, quality of care, experiences of services outside of opening hours, and experiences of NHS dental and pharmacy services.
A total of 700,000 responses were registered to this latest GP patient survey, which asked patients a range of multiple choice questions about getting in touch with their practice, their use of services, and their care experiences. The subsequent data provided information on 680,000 appointments, including data from 120,000 carers and 450,000 people with long-term conditions.
Headline findings from the survey include that 73.9 percent of patients rate their overall experience with their GP practice as ‘good’, with 89.9 percent saying that their needs were met during their last appointment. 92.3 percent reported that they had “confidence and trust in the healthcare professional” at their last appointment, and 72.1 percent saying that they knew what the next step in dealing with their request would be two days after contacting their practice.
Of those who tried to make contact with their GP practice using its website, 47.9 percent found this process ‘easy’ or ‘very easy’. On the other hand, 17.7 percent found using the website to make contact ‘very difficult’, and a further 19.4 percent said that it was ‘fairly difficult’.
For the NHS App, 44.8 percent of patients who had attempted to use it to contact their practice found it either ‘very easy’ or ‘fairly easy’, whilst 39.4 percent found the app to be ‘fairly difficult’ or ‘very difficult’ to use for this purpose.
The report also detailed the method patients last used to get in touch with their practice, with 68 percent using the phone, 17 percent going online, 14 percent attending in person, and 1 percent using ‘another way’.
Relating to which online GP services patients had used in the past 12 months, 31 percent reported not using any online services, whilst amongst those who had, the majority (41 percent) reported booking an appointment online. 39.9 percent had gone online to order repeat prescriptions, 21.1 percent had used online services to find out test results, and 16.9 percent said they had accessed medical records online.
On appointment times, 20 percent of patients said that they had waited more than a week for their appointment, whilst 12 percent waited more than two weeks, and 34 percent stated that their wait time was “too long”. For NHS dentistry, 52 percent had tried getting an appointment in the last two years, and 76 percent were successful in getting one.
The survey also collected information about the type of appointments patients last received, with face-to-face the most popular at 64 percent, followed by over the phone at 28.9 percent. 1.1 percent reported that their last appointment took place by text message, 0.9 percent by online message, and 0.4 percent by video call.
Looking at whether the type of appointment patients had affected whether or not their needs were met, the survey showed that 92.5 percent of patients felt their needs had been met at face-to-face appointments at GP practices, compared with 85.8 percent whose appointment had taken place over the phone, 84.7 percent who had had video call appointments, and 72.6 percent who had had a text message appointment.
When their GP practice was closed, the report highlighted that the most popular point of contact for patients to get help was NHS 111, with 14.1 percent of those completing the survey who had tried getting in touch when their practice was closed stating that they had used this method in the last 12 months. The next most popular choice was to go to A&E (7.3 percent), or the pharmacy (4.7 percent), with 3.6 percent using NHS 111 online, and 1.8 percent using a different NHS website such as NHS.uk.
Along with the main report, NHS England has also published a dashboard offering PCN-level results, and ICS-level insights available to download in PowerPoint format.
To view the report and materials provided on the GP Patient Survey 2024, please click here.
Patient access in focus
Statistics published by NHS England show that 1,301,924 GP appointments in April 2024 were classed as video/online, a trend that has increased each month from 172,114 reported video/online consultations in April 2023.
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