NHS England together with Ipsos, have today published the latest Official Statistics from the GP Patient Survey.

The latest survey consisted of around 2.56 million questionnaires sent out to patients aged 16 or over registered with GP practices in England, from 2 January to 25 March 2024. 699,790  patients completed and returned a questionnaire, resulting in a national response rate of 27.3%.

Results are weighted. Weighting ensures results are more representative of the population of patients aged 16 or over registered with a GP practice.

Changes to the 2024 survey and trends

The publication of the 2024 survey results is the start of a new time series for GPPS. This means that trend data for previous years of the survey is not presented alongside the 2024 results, as it would normally be. The 2024 results are not comparable with previous years because of two significant changes which have been made to the survey in 2024:

• New questionnaire – the questionnaire has been updated to make sure it continues to reflect how primary care services are delivered and how patients experience them. However, even for those individual questions where the wording has remained the same as in previous years, analysis has shown that trends cannot be reliably presented.
• Changes to the survey design – the methodology of the survey has changed to an ‘online first’ approach. This is designed to improve response rates and reduce costs. The new approach will encourage a higher proportion of online responses, with a paper questionnaire only enclosed in the last postal reminder. Testing has shown that this change in methodology will lead to differences in results which are not due to a change in patient experience, so trends cannot be reliably presented.

Summary of key headlines

A summary of some of the key headlines from the 2024 results are provided below. For a more detailed overview of the results please see the data and reports published on the GP Patient Survey website.

Overall Experience

• 73.9% of patients had a good overall experience of their GP practice.
• 67.3% of patients had a good overall experience of contacting their GP practice.
• Of patients who had contacted or used an NHS service when their GP practice was closed, 55.9% had a good overall experience.
• Of patients who tried to get an NHS dental appointment in the last two years, 69.2% had a good overall experience of NHS dental services.
• 86.8% of patients had a good experience of using pharmacy services.

Access

• 49.7% of patients said they find it (very or fairly) easy to contact someone on the phone at their GP practice (of which 18.9% found it ‘very easy’ and 30.8% found it ‘fairly easy’).
• 47.9% said they find it (very or fairly) easy to contact their GP practice using the practice’s website (of which 21.0% found it ‘very easy’ and 26.9% found it ‘fairly easy’).
• 44.8% said they find it (very or fairly) easy to contact their GP practice using the NHS App (of which 20.9% found it ‘very easy’ and 23.9% found it ‘fairly easy’).

Last contact

When patients last tried to contact their practice:

• 67.8% phoned the practice
• 13.9% visited in person
• 11.1% contacted the practice online, using their practice’s website
• 3.9% contacted the practice using the NHS app
• 1.8% used a different website, or different app
• 1.4% contacted the practice in another way

The survey asked patients a series of questions about their experience following the contact they made with the practice. 82.7% of patients said they knew what the next step would be in dealing with their request

Of those patients, 93.1% knew what the next step would be within 2 days.

Last Appointment

The last time patients had an appointment:

• 64.0% had an ‘face-to-face’ appointment at their GP practice.
• 28.9% had a phone appointment.
• 4.4% had an ‘face-to-face’ appointment at another practice location.
• 1.1% had an appointment that was carried out by text message
• 0.9% had an appointment that was carried out by online message
• 0.4% had a home visit
• 0.4% had a video call

Patients were asked about the time between contacting their practice and their appointment taking place. 27.1% had an appointment on the same day, 7.8% the next day, 21.9% a few days later, 20.8% between a week or two later, 12.4% more than two weeks later and 9.9% couldn’t remember.

When patients were asked how they felt about the wait for their appointment, nearly two-thirds (65.9%) said “it was about right”.

 89.9% of patients said that their needs were met at their last appointment.

When your GP practice is closed

31% of patients reported having contacted or used an NHS service when they wanted care or advice from a healthcare professional at their GP practice, but it was closed.

Around half of these patients (50.2%) felt that in these instances the time they had waited for care and advice was about right; around half (49.8%) felt that it was “too long”.

 Pharmacy

In total, 89.3% of patients reported having used at least one of the listed pharmacy services in the last 12 months, and of those, 86.8% had a good experience of using these pharmacy services.

From the list provided, the most frequently used service was ‘to pick up a prescription’. The full list was as follows:

• 75.8% To pick up a prescription
• 44.6% To buy medication (such as paracetamol or eye drops)
• 20.9% To get advice (for example, about prescription medicines, a health issue or other health services)
• 20.0% To get a vaccine (for example, flu or COVID)
• 7.3% To address an issue which my GP practice, NHS 111 or A&E referred me to a pharmacy for
• 5.2% To have my blood pressure checked
• 2.7% To monitor my medication or get other support for a long-term health condition
• 1.4% To get contraception without a GP prescription

Supporting information

Pre-release access list