General Practitioners: Standards

(asked on 10th January 2024) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the average waiting time was for a non-urgent GP appointment in (a) rural and (b) urban areas in the latest period for which data is available.


Answered by
Andrea Leadsom Portrait
Andrea Leadsom
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
This question was answered on 15th January 2024

NHS England publishes monthly data on general practice appointments, including the approximate length of time between appointments being booked and taking place, although this is not a proxy for waiting times. There are several factors which can influence the timing of appointments, and it is not possible to estimate the time between the patient’s first attempt to contact their surgery and an appointment.

In England, in November 2023, 42.6% of appointments took place on the same day as they were booked, and 82.7% took place within two weeks of booking. In the Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin Integrated Care Board, 45% of 257,650 general practitioner appointments in November 2023 occurred on the same day and 83.6% within 14 days. NHS England does not, however, publish appointment data at United Kingdom or constituency level or include information on rurality in this publication.

We have set an expectation that everyone who needs an appointment at a general practice should get one within two weeks, with the most urgent patients being seen on the same day.

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