Three in four patients find it easy to contact a GP practice, which is up 12% from July 2024, Office of National Statistics (ONS) figures have shown.
Data from May 2025 suggests that 72% of patients surveyed found it easy or very easy to contact their GP practice, compared to 60% of patients in July 2024.
Around 9% of patients said they found contacting their practice difficult, which is down from 18% in July 2024.
It comes after 99% of GP practices across England have a digital telephone system in place to improve access, as part of the modern general practice model.
In 2023, it was announced that GP practices would be given £240m to implement new technology as part of a GP recovery plan to make it easier for patients to access practices.
The latest NHS England figures show there were 29.3 million GP appointments in April 2025. This is up almost a fifth (19.1%) on the same period in April 2019, according to NHS England.
Dr Amanda Doyle, national director for primary care and community services at NHS England, said: ‘It’s brilliant news that more people find it easy to contact a GP, because improving access to general practice is an NHS priority and vital for patients as GP teams deliver more than 29 million appointments every month – up almost 5 million since before the pandemic.
‘But we know there’s still more to do to make it easier for patients to contact and see their local GP team, which includes making even better use of new technology to improve patient care.
‘Patients can also use the NHS app to order repeat prescriptions and view their test results without needing to contact their family doctor first.’
Health minister Ashley Dalton said: ‘Rebuilding the broken NHS starts with GPs. Patients need to be able to easily book an appointment, and in the manner they want.
‘These figures show our Plan for Change is working – and the best is still to come. We backed our NHS with a record £26 billion at the budget, including £889 million for general practice.
‘This kind of investment coupled with reform means we’ll keep seeing these improvements – as we shift our health service from analogue to digital.’
It comes as a new feature in the NHS App that allows patients to track their prescriptions has been rolled out to 1,500 community pharmacies in England.
Last week, North West London ICB set out targets for GP practices to respond to calls within 10 minutes and online consultations within one day.
