Many practices are still concerned about GP capacity, but there are still plenty of opportunities to offer online booking, especially for planned care. Think wider than just GP appointments and ensure that anything that can be prebooked is available to book online too, ensuring equity of access and allowing patients who have been requested to have a follow-up, clinic review, medication review etc. to book online. Guidance for directly bookable appointments offers suggestions for the types of appointments that can be booked online. Some patients may prefer to continue using other approved patient-facing service Apps to book and cancel their appointment.

As general practice evolves, it is essential to adopt a flexible, open approach to using digital technologies. Restricting access to or disabling features of online booking systems — for example, only enabling them at certain times or on certain days — can unintentionally intensify demand pressures. This approach often creates artificial bottlenecks, leading to sudden peaks in demand rather than a steady, manageable flow.

By contrast, consistently available online consultation (OC) systems throughout core hours allow practices to better distribute demand across the day, enhance patient experience, and support more efficient triage and care delivery. These tools are not just digital alternatives — they are essential enablers of modern general practice.

It will be even more important  to have an open approach to using these technologies in general practice as from October 2025, having OC available throughout core hours will become a contractual requirement – reflecting its critical role in delivering timely, high-quality access for patients and sustainable workflows for practices.

To support this, practices should make use of the resources below to optimise their online consultation and appointment systems, ensuring they are configured to meet local needs and make best use of available capacity.

Benefits for GP practices

• Reduction in unplanned surgery visits in person to make, cancel or reschedule appointments
• Reduction in telephone calls to make, cancel or reschedule appointments, reducing pressure on phone lines (which can have an effect of reducing call wait times overall) and practice staff
• Potential to save staff time with less direct patient contact, particularly when booking high-capacity clinics such as seasonal vaccination clinics
• Fewer missed appointments – NHS figures released in 2021tell us that it is 21% less likely that a patient will fail to attend an appointment booked online
• Where a patient uses the option of including a reason for the appointment, an opportunistic review by a member of the practice team may suggest there is a more appropriate person to deal with the problem, and the patient contacted accordingly (remembering that patients still have the option of seeing a specific/preferred clinician). For staff trained in care navigation, it is relatively easy to identify if an appointment is with the wrong clinician; however the onus will always be on the patient making the booking

 Benefits for patients

• Fewer surgery visits needed to make, cancel, or reschedule appointments
• Fewer telephone calls to make, cancel or reschedule appointments, reducing the frustrations of lengthy call waiting times
• Ease of use and convenience with 24/7 access
• Choice of clinician from within a wider Multi-Disciplinary Team (MDT)
• Online services can be helpful to people with reduced mobility, sensory difficulties or learning difficulties
• Patients can access the service through the NHS App, other commercial providers of Apps, and the practice website, using a smartphone, tablet, or computer
• People with proxy access can book appointments on a patient’s behalf which is useful if support is needed for a patient to attend an appointment
• Patients may be able to choose whether a face-to-face or telephone appointment is the most appropriate enabling flexibility to fit around their schedules
• Patients can check their appointment details in the online portal, reducing the potential for missed appointments and the need to reschedule

 Resources

• making Appointments available for online booking
• how to name Appointments

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