What patients really want from general practice

Access to general practice is something of a sore point – patients think it is impossible to get an appointment, satisfaction with general practice is falling year on year, politicians are constantly issuing edicts to ‘fix’ it, and negative headlines are all over the newspapers.

The number of consultations has increased to 34.3 million in 2023, from 30.8 million in 2019, against a background of declining numbers of GPs.

But what do patients really want? A new systematic review, published in the British Journal of General Practice, aimed to find out.

It showed that what patients wanted was simple:

• A nearby practice, with clean waiting rooms
• Easy booking using simple systems and short waiting times
• A positive relationship with the practice
• An appointment with a specific clinician, and
• A choice in how the appointment was delivered – face-to-face or remotely – according to individual circumstances

Communication and being kept informed throughout the process of making and having an appointment was also on patients’ wish list – and this could be addressed by general practice, the authors said.

The study also found a lack of confidence among patients when seeing a professional other than a GP – and, for example, adding an Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme (ARRS) role to general practice was only associated with a one percentage point increase in the proportion of patients able to make an appointment – something which seems not to have been considered when the scheme was introduced.

Demand is often deemed ‘inappropriate, excessive or unwarranted’ by both general practice staff and patients, the authors state. ‘Understanding and addressing patient wants may be an important part of understanding why demand has increased, and could feed into changes in how access to general practice is delivered.’

Atherton H, et al. Br J Gen Pract 3 July 2025; https://bjgp.org/content/early/2025/03/18/BJGP.2024.0582