News

GP Patient Survey 2012

Aggregated data for January to March & July to September 2012

The Department, together with Ipsos MORI, has published the latest Official Statistics from the GP Patient Survey. The survey provides information on patients’ overall experience of Primary Care services and their overall experience of accessing these services. The latest results are aggregated from two waves of patient responses collected in January to March 2012 and July to September 2012.

Key points from the aggregated results of the GP Patient Survey are:

  • Overall response rate was 36% with nearly 1 million responses across two waves of the survey.
  • 87.6 per cent of patients rate their overall experience with their GP practice as good. This is 0.7 percentage points lower than the aggregated 2011-12 results.
  • 77.8 per cent of patients rate their experience of making an appointment as good. This is 1.3 percentage points lower than the aggregated 2011-12 results.
  • 80.5 per cent of patients are satisfied with their surgery opening hours. This is 0.5 percentage points lower than the aggregated 2011-12 results
  • 89.5 per cent of patients with a long-term health condition rate their overall experience of their GP surgery as good. This is 0.7 percentage points lower than the aggregated 2011-12 results
  • 92.7 per cent of patients with a long term condition feel confident to manage their own condition. This is 0.2 percentage points lower than the aggregated 2011-12 results.

The published data is available at National, PCT and GP practice level on the GP Patient Survey website results pages.

A number of changes were made to the GP patient survey methodology and questionnaire for 2011-12. As a consequence of these changes, no results from 2011-2012 onwards can be compared to previous years, even where questions appear the same. In addition to new questions, and a change in the frequency of mailings from quarterly to twice a year, there have been a number of refinements to the weighting scheme. Weighting is standard practice in surveys of this nature and is required in order to ensure that findings are representative of the wider population, and not just those who respond to the survey.

Results from previous years GP patients survey are available in the archive section of the GP Patient Survey website results pages.

Pre-release access list

24-hour Pre-release Access list

Breach of the Code of Practice for Official Statistics

Prior to publication, selected survey results were shared in error with officials not on the agreed pre-release access list,contrary to Protocol 2 Practice 8 of the Code.

This breach has been reported to the National Statistician’s Office and remedial action is in hand.