GP Patient Survey 2023: tool shows how patients rated booking appointments at doctor’s surgery in Preston

More than a quarter of people rated their experience of booking an appointment as poor, the highest proportion in six years. The government said it was investing in GP services “to tackle the 8am rush” and improve patient experience. The latest annual GP Patient Survey, produced by Ipsos on behalf of NHS England, surveyed 760,000 people between January and April 2023. It asked what they thought about their local GP surgery, including their experiences of booking an appointment.

The results are published to GP practice level and NationalWorld has built an interactive search tool so you can find out how your surgery fared. When patients were asked, ‘How would you describe your experience of making an appointment?’, more than a quarter (27.7%) described it as poor – the highest since current records began in 2018 and a 1.8 percentage point rise on the previous year’s figures when 25.9% described their experience as poor. More than half (54.4%) of the respondents said their overall experience was ‘good’, but this is a 1.8 percentage point drop on the previous year’s figures and again the lowest in six years. A further 17.9% said their overall experience of booking an appointment was ‘neither good nor poor’.

Patient satisfaction peaked at 70.6% in 2021, a result likely affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. A separate question asked how easy it was to get through to the surgery on the phone, with more than half of patients (50.2%) describing it as ‘not easy’, a proportion which has more than doubled in 10 years.

How does your local Preston GP surgery compare?

Patients were able to say whether their practice was ‘very good’ or ‘fairly good’ or ‘very poor’ or ‘fairly poor’. For the purpose of this analysis the ‘good’ and ‘fairly good’ responses have been combined, as have the ‘very poor’ and ‘fairly poor’ responses.

A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Care said: “We’re committed to increasing capacity so GP practices can offer more appointments from more staff than ever before. Appointments are already on the rise, and we recently announced £240 million of support to practices across the UK to embrace the latest technology, tackle the 8am rush and make it easier for patients to see their GP.”

To see how your local GP fares click HERE.