The public experience: GP appointments

Healthwatch North Yorkshire carried out a survey to find out about people’s experience of their GP practice.

They found satisfaction levels with GP practices to be high across North Yorkshire - 89% of survey respondents for North Yorkshire CCG area said their experience of their GP practice was either very good or fairly good; slightly above national levels (83%) reported in the recent England-wide GP Patient Survey. However, they identified a few issues as well. These include:

• Difficulties in booking a GP appointment - a few people found it difficult or did not manage to book an appointment at all.
• Having to give a lot of details to the receptionist who they felt then decided what type of appointment or health professional they would get/or see.
• A large proportion of respondents reported frustrations with long phone queues when trying to book an appointment.
• The length of time between booking an appointment and speaking to a healthcare professional was also raised as a concern.
• Some GP practices have disabled previously available online systems (Engage Consult), leaving no option but to phone.
• Some respondents were concerned about possible misdiagnosis as a result of phone appointments and the impact of a long waiting window for a phone appointment.
• A few respondents expressed the problems they have experienced with phone appointments due to being deaf or having autism. However, when they requested a different mode of appointment, such as a video appointment, their request was ignored.