Scottish Government

AN OFFICIAL STATISTICS PUBLICATION FOR SCOTLAND

GP Patient Experience Survey Access results for Practices 2010

May 18, 2010 (Revised on May 26, 2010)

A pdf version is available here: GP Patient Experience Survey Access results for Practices 2010

The results of the access questions from the 2009/10 GP Patient Experience Survey were released today by Scotland's Chief Statistician. This survey was sent to a random sample of patients registered with 1,014 GP practices in Scotland.

These results summarise feedback from patients about whether they were able to see or speak to someone at their GP practice fairly quickly (within 2 working days / 48 hours) and about whether they were able to book appointments in advance.

• The main findings are:
  94.5 per cent of patients in Scotland were able to obtain 48-hour access compared to 89.6 per cent last year.
• 84.5 per cent of patients in Scotland were able to obtain advance access compared to 75.4 last year.
• At 917 GP practices in Scotland, at least 90 per cent of patients reported that they were able to obtain 48 hour access. This equates to 90 per cent of all practices, compared with 67 per cent of practices in last year's access survey.
• More than 70 per cent of patients at every practice in Scotland said they were able to obtain 48 hour access. Last year 20 practices had a result below this level.
• At 581 GP practices in Scotland, at least 90 per cent of patients reported that they were able to book an appointment in advance. This equates to 58 per cent of practices, compared with 39 per cent of practices last year.
• More than 60 per cent of patients said they were able to book in advance at 94 per cent of practices, while last year this was the case for 86 per cent of practices.

Results for all practices can be found on the Scottish Government website at: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Health/GPAccessSurveyResults (excel format)

Table 1 shows the percentage of patients in each NHS Board that were able to obtain 48 hour and advance access.

Table 1 48-hour GP access and advance booking at national and NHS Board level ¹

(Revised May 26, 2010 - see Background Notes)

¹ Results for each GP practice have been weighted by the relative practice size to provide results more representative of the population at national and NHS Board level.

48 Hour Access

Chart 1 shows how the practice results are spread - it can be seen that the majority have very high results. The minimum result for a practice was 72% and the maximum was 100%. The range of practice results for NHS Boards is shown in table 2.

Chart 1: Distribution of Practice Results for 48 hour access

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Table 2: Practice results for 48 hour access by NHS Board

Advance access

Chart 2 shows that the range of practice results for advance booking was
wider than for 48 hour access. The minimum was 29% and the maximum 100%. Table 3 shows the number of practices in each NHS Board by range of advance access results. (Note that these results exclude 20 practices identified as "Open Access". This is where a practice does not offer any pre-bookable appointments with a GP but offers times when a patients can turn up and wait to be seen.)

Chart 2: Distribution of practice results for advance access

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Table 3: Practice results for advance access by NHS board