A meagre 3% of patients favour booking GP appointments online with the vast majority still booking by phone.
The GP Patient Survey found almost two in ten patients said it is “not easy” to speak to someone at their GP surgery.
A meagre 3% of patients favour booking GP appointments online with the vast majority still booking by phone.
The GP Patient Survey found almost two in ten patients said it is “not easy” to speak to someone at their GP surgery.
One in eight patients were forced to call their GP more than once to schedule a convenient appointment with just under one in ten failing to make an appointment at all.
Of these patients, 12% said they were prevented from booking an appointment due to their GP’s reluctance to book ahead and 8% had to visit A&E instead.
Just over a third of patients saw or spoke to a GP or nurse on the day they initially contacted the practice, while a third of patients had to wait “a few days”.
More than one in ten patients (13%) had to wait a week to see or speak to someone from their GP surgery.
However, 93% found their appointment time “convenient” and 48% found it “very convenient”.
The majority of patient surveyed (61%) said they are happy with the time spent waiting for appointments, but 8% feel they have to wait “far too long”.
On the whole, patients are also satisfied with the opening hours of their GP surgery.
Your comments (terms and conditions apply):
“Booking online would be a far more useful exercise if all available appointments were shown on the online booking system rather than just a select few. It defeats the object entirely if having gone online to book, you still have to phone the GP surgery in order to access the appointments not shown on the online booking system. It should also be made possible to make appointments with nurse, physio, phlebotomist etc online as well” – C Chapman, Devon
“Whilst we must not be complacent this is not bad for £65 per annum…for 5.3 consults pa £12 each! …compare that to a washing machine engineer call out or the RAC/AA” – Peter Holden, Derbyshire
