Patients’ satisfaction with booking a GP appointment is on the rise, despite a public row brewing over whether doctors are seeing enough people face-to-face.
The majority of patients (71%) had a good experience booking an appointment, according to the latest GP Patient Survey, produced by Ipsos MORI on behalf of NHS England.
This is up from 65% in the 2020 survey.
The issue of whether GPs are offering enough face-to-face appointments as Covid-19 restrictions ease remains hotly debated.
Health Secretary Sajid Javid has now unveiled a £250m package for GPs in England to improve access to their services - but only if they increase the number of in-person consultations.
GP groups have responded angrily, accusing ministers of failing to grasp the scale of the staffing crisis affecting surgeries.
The patient survey contacted 2.4 million people from January to April of this year to gather information on how patients feel about their local GP service, and around a third of them responded.
The results reveal the best and worst rated surgeries in the area.
They also shed light on people’s experiences of booking an appointment locally.
Here we reveal the GP practices in Northamptonshire Clinical Commissioning Group area which were voted the easiest/hardest to make an appointment at. Sixty-nine surgeries were ranked in the county
Surgeries are ranked by the proportion of patients who said their experience of booking an appointment was ‘very good/poor’.
1.
There were 262 survey forms sent out to patients at Wootton Medical Centre. The response rate was 54.6%. When asked about their experience of making an appointment, 50.2% said very good, 39% said fairly good, 5% were neither good nor poor - while 4.2% said fairly poor and 1.5% very poor. It ranked 7th in Northamptonshire. Photo: Google
2.
There were 265 survey forms sent out to patients at Saxon Spires Practice. The response rate was 52.8%. When asked about their experience of making an appointment, 42.3% said very good, 43.2% said fairly good, 11.1% were neither good nor poor - while 2.5% said fairly poor and 0.9% very poor. It ranked 13th in Northamptonshire. Photo: Google
3.
There were 357 survey forms sent out to patients at Moulton Surgery. The response rate was 41.7%. When asked about their experience of making an appointment, 32.5% said very good, 43% said fairly good, 12.1% were neither good nor poor - while 5.2% said fairly poor and 7.2% very poor. It ranked 29th in Northamptonshire. Photo: Google
4.
There were 423 survey forms sent out to patients at The Crescent Medical Centre. The response rate was 37.1%. When asked about their experience of making an appointment, 38.6% said very good, 46.2% said fairly good, 11% were neither good nor poor - while 2.7% said fairly poor and 1.5% very poor. It ranked 18th in Northamptonshire. Photo: Google