2024 GP Patient Survey results released

The latest GP Patient Survey (GPPS) results have now been published.

The 2024 survey is the first in a new time series. The questionnaire was redeveloped to make sure it continues to reflect how primary care services are delivered and how patients experience them, including changes set out in the Delivery plan for recovering access to primary care.

It asks about local GP practice services, the last contact with the practice, the quality of care at the last appointment, overall experience of the GP practice, experience when the GP practice is closed, pharmacy services and NHS dentistry, as well as current health circumstances.

The infographic (below) and national report (downloadable from the GPPS website) outline the headline findings.

What do the findings tell us?

In the 2024 survey, the majority of patients reported a good overall experience of a range of services:

• 73.9% of their GP practice.
• 67.3% of contacting their GP practice the last time they tried.
• 55.9% of NHS services when their practice was closed.
• 86.8% of pharmacy services.
• 69.2% of NHS dental services.

In terms of access to GP practice services:

• Two thirds (67%) said their overall experience of contacting their GP practice the last time they tried was good.
• The majority (68%) last tried to contact their GP practice on the phone. Among these patients, most (84%) were held in a queue.
• 89.9% said thinking about the reason for their last appointment, their needs were met.

Patients were positive about their experience during their last appointment:

• 92.3% said they had confidence and trust in the healthcare professional they saw or spoke to.
• 72.5% said the healthcare professional was good at considering their mental wellbeing.
• Of those who tried to contact their GP practice, 72% knew within two days what the next step in dealing with their request would be.

Where can I find more information?

GPPS results are available at national, Integrated Care System (ICS), Primary Care Network (PCN) or practice level by going to the Surveys and Reports page.

For ICS specific results, take a look at the ICS slidepacks which bring together ICS data for key questions in one report, including PCN comparisons and benchmarking against national level data. This also includes an example of the types of demographic breakdowns which are available for all questions, providing insight into health inequalities.

For PCN results, an interactive PCN dashboard is also available. This presents the results for all questions for individual PCNs, including variation by practice within each PCN.

The GPPS analysis tool will be available in September 2024. You can use this tool to view the 2024 results for each question, in charts and tables, with the option to filter for specific groups of patients by age, ethnicity and more. It will also allow you to run bespoke crosstabulations of the data. Any analysis you run will be available to download in PowerPoint and Excel formats.

Technical information

The survey received 699,790 responses from patients aged 16 years or over who are registered with a GP practice in England. This includes 563,585 questionnaires completed online. The survey has a national response rate of 27.3%.

Trends are not available for the 2024 survey. In addition to the changes to the questionnaire, the methodology of the survey has changed to an 'online first' approach, resulting in a higher proportion of online responses. Previous testing shows that these changes create differences in results which are not due to changes in patient experience. Further methodological information is available in the Technical annex.

Please note that fieldwork for the survey (the period in which surveys are sent and returned) is undertaken from approximately January to March in each respective year. The 2024 survey took place between 2 January to 25 March 2024.

For more information, please contact the GP Patient Survey team.