Patient satisfaction with GP services, including practices, individual GPs and appointment booking, remains at a high level, the official patient survey results have revealed.
The latest patient survey results results, covering the period from January to September 2014, saw 85.2% of patients rate their GP practice as good, while nearly as many (78.0%) would recommend it to someone who had just moved to the area.
Although this was a small decline in satisfaction rates of around 1% on each measure since last year, the vast majority of patients (92.2%), have confidence and trust in the last GP they saw.
The majority of patients (85.4%) got an appointment to see or speak to someone at their surgery when they last tried, a decrease of 0.7 percentage points since the results published a year ago.
More than three in four patients said they were happy with surgery opening hours (75.7%) although this was a decrease of 3% from the corresponding time period in 2013, and more than nine out of ten patients who were able to get an appointment the last time they tried (91.8%) say their appointment was convenient, a decrease of 0.4 percentage points since the results published a year ago.
Satisfaction with out-of-hours GP services also remained high, with the number of patients who have tried to call such a service in the past six months rating their experience as good increasing by 0.4% to 67.9%.
For the full latest patient survey results, click here.
Example patient survey results January – September 2013
Percentage of patients rating each service (compared to 2013):
- Overall experience of GP surgery is good: 85.2% (-1.0%)
- Would recommend GP surgery to someone who just moved into the area: 78.0% (-1.2%)
- Experience of making an appointment was good: 73.8% (1.6%)
- Overall experience of calling out of hours services was good: 67.9 (+0.4%)
- Easy to get through to GP surgery by phone: 71.8% (-2.1%)
- Last appointment was at a convenient time: 91.8% (-0.4%)
- Receptionists were helpful: 86.9% (-0.7%)
- Patient has a GP they prefer to see: 53.5% (-1.7%)
- Patients were able to see their preferred GP always or nearly always: 60.1% (-1.6%)
- Have confidence and trust in the last GP they saw: 92.2% (-0.3%)
- Satisfied with surgery opening hours: 75.7% (-2.9%)
Source: NHS England
