GP teams are delivering four million more appointments a month compared to before the pandemic, according to new NHS England data.
Excluding vaccinations, November 2023 saw more than 31.4 million appointments delivered across GP practices, making it the busiest November on record.
Over two in every five appointments were booked and attended on the same day (up 3.3% on the previous month), while nearly seven in 10 appointments were attended within a week of their initial booking (a 4.5% jump on the month before).
The NHS set out a range of actions to recover access to general practice last May – the plan is expected to free up as many as 10 million GP appointments a year by next winter.
NHS England’s national director for primary care, Dr Amanda Doyle, explained: “The NHS published a plan last year to improve access to GP services, which includes upgrading telephone systems to make it easier for people to contact their general practice while more than 34,000 additional staff have joined GP teams since 2019 to deliver even more appointments.”
Eight in 10 GP practices have already the switch to better telephone technology, with the remaining sites scheduled to complete the upgrade by March.
Plus, the extra 34,000 staff is well ahead of the initial target of recruiting 26,000 more people by March 2024.
The health service has also upskilled nearly 2.500 staff to better assess patients’ needs when they contact their GP practice – thousands more will be trained in the coming months.
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