Action needed to address drop in public satisfaction with general practice, says IGPM

Action, not blame, is the solution to addressing the decline in public satisfaction with GP services, as revealed in a survey, said the Institute of General Practice Management (IGPM).

The British Social Attitudes (BSA) survey, published by Nuffield Trust and The King’s Fund, revealed that public satisfaction with general practice fell to 31% in 2024, down from 34% the previous year.

Access to general practice was highlighted as a key driver of unhappiness in the survey.

It revealed that more than six in ten people (62%) reported dissatisfaction with the time it takes to get a GP appointment. And 51% of respondents said making it easier to get a GP appointment was the most important priority for the NHS to address. 

The IGPM acknowledged the frustration felt by patients due to long waits but said in a statement that the survey findings reflected ‘the immense and growing pressure’ in general practice.

‘Behind every statistic is a practice team working flat out in an underfunded, overstretched system,’ said the IGPM.

And it said ‘the solution isn’t blame – it’s action’ as it called for changes to address the problem.

The IGPM wants to see greater representation of practice managers at all levels of system decision-making and ‘adequate funding, flexibility, and autonomy for practices to meet local needs’.

The organisation also wants to see: 

•  investment in the whole primary care team, including non-clinical leaders and administrators

 • protected time for service improvement

• ensuring that digital tools and triage systems were well communicated and appropriately resourced

• support for staff wellbeing and resilience in recognition that morale underpins quality of care

Dr Michael Mulholland, honorary secretary of the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP), said the survey results highlighted a disconnect between demand and resources.

‘The unfortunate reality is that patient need for GP care and services continues to outstrip the resources available to us to deliver it. GPs and our teams delivered 367 million appointments last year – over a million every single day – and increasingly complex care, with just a handful more GPs than we had in 2019,’ he said.

He added that the survey showed the consequences of ‘longstanding failures in funding and workforce planning’.

The survey revealed that public dissatisfaction was high across the NHS, not just in general practice.

For example, public satisfaction with A&E has declined sharply, from 31% to just 19%, while dissatisfaction has risen from 37% to 52%.

The survey revealed dissatisfaction at how the NHS is run, with just 21% of British adults saying they were satisfied – the lowest level since the survey began in 1983 and a 39-percentage-point drop since 2019.

But report author Bea Taylor from the Nuffield Trust said that despite the falling rates of public satisfaction, support for the NHS’s founding principles remains strong.

‘The government says the NHS is broken, and the public agree. But support for the core principles of the NHS – free at the point of use, available to all and funded by taxation – endures despite the collapse in satisfaction. Harnessing this support and fixing the foundations of the NHS must be central to the government’s forthcoming reform programme,’ she said.

The survey results are based on responses from 2,945 adults across England, Scotland and Wales, with 933 answering detailed questions about specific NHS services. It was carried out between 16 September and 27 October last year.