GPs survey: Patient satisfaction with services in Wigan has dropped to its lowest since 2018

Each spring, NHS England and market research company Ipsos Mori survey patients across England on how they feel about GP services.

Between January and April more than 700,000 people responded – including 3,937 patients in the NHS Wigan Borough CCG area.

The results show 73.2 per cent of people in the area would describe their GP experience as “good” – down from 85.5 per cent in spring 2021, and the lowest in any year since 2018, when comparable data is first available.

The survey further found that 32.6 per cent of people with long-term health conditions do not feel they have had enough support from local services – up from 24.4 per cent last year.

Beccy Baird, senior fellow at independent think tank the King’s Fund, said: “For many of us, general practice is the front door to the NHS – these results show that patients are finding that door increasingly hard to push open.

“GPs are working harder than ever before, yet these findings show a dramatic fall in patients’ experience of getting an appointment.

“Many of the challenges patients face accessing their GP stem from the chronic staff shortages that have plagued services for years.

“Practices can’t recruit enough GPs, nurses or other professionals to meet the rising levels of need, because in many cases those staff simply don’t exist."

The results show 15.2 per cent of respondents in Wigan had avoided booking a necessary GP appointment because they did not want to burden the NHS, and 8.9 per cent because they did not want to risk catching Covid-19.

Prof Martin Marshall, chairman of the Royal College of GPs, said: “These findings reflect an over-stretched service, with GPs and our teams doing our best for patients under intense workload and workforce pressures.

“Ultimately, GPs, our teams and patients want the same thing – access to high quality and timely care – and we share patients’ frustrations when this can’t be delivered.”

Linda Scott, Wigan’s director of primary care at NHS Greater Manchester, said: “I am disappointed that the GP Patient Survey is showing that fewer patients are satisfied with the overall service provided by their GP practice. More than seven in 10 are still saying that they receive a good service and this matches the patient satisfaction for England.

"I would like to see our patient satisfaction go up again and so we will be carefully reviewing the feedback in the survey and following it up locally with patients and practices to see what improvements can be made.”

Across England, satisfaction was at its lowest level on record, with 72 per cent of respondents describing their overall experience as “good” – down from 83 per cent last year.

The survey results were weighted and rebalanced to account for differences in age, gender, and other demographic factors between areas.

An NHS spokeswoman said the NHS was “determined to make it easier to get an appointment, which is why the health service has invested record amounts in primary care, including offering a new telephone service which increases the number of phone lines practices have for patients".