2025 general practice patient survey results – NEL initial analysis

Following last week’s message of thanks from Ben and Sarah to all practices for the hard work to make improvements on general practice access and experience, NEL ICB has undertaken some additional analysis of the 2025 general practice patient survey results.

Summary

At an ICS level, and comparing to last year’s results, NEL has made improvements in most indicators, and most notably in ‘overall experience of general practice’.

These positive achievements are testament to the significant work of GP practices, supported by NEL ICB primary care, transformation and other teams that have worked with practices over the last year. The main focus of the support over the last year has been on access, experience and digitalisation, which are the areas where we see the most improvement (at an ICS level).

Compared to other ICSs in London and England, while we are making improvements, NEL remains in the bottom 10% and below the national average on most indicators.

Individual practices within NEL will have variable results for each question – increasing, maintaining or decreasing since last year. Practices are encouraged to review their results (and compare to last year) to identify where efforts have translated into positive results, and where additional efforts or support might be required.

NHS NEL will be taking a holistic approach to reviewing the results at individual practice level – taking into consideration wider indicators/data, known practice issues, and the practice efforts made over the last year, and will contact specific practices to congratulate and offer support.

Overall experience

The ‘overall experience of general practice’ score is the key indicator for this dataset and is used as a general outcome measure by most stakeholders. The results for England and each ICS in London are provided below, comparing the results to 2024.

On this key indicator, NEL has increased by 2 percentage points, which is more than most other ICSs in London, and more than the national increase of 1 percentage point.

However, NEL remains the lowest scoring ICS in London, and nationally NEL ranks at 40 out of 42 ICSs.

Of the 261 NEL practices included in the survey, 148 are at or above the national average, and 113 are below, broken down as follows (with comparison to 2024):

Nationally, outliers in this indicator are considered to be those that do not achieve 60% or higher. NEL shows a positive improvement in the number of outliers from 64 in 2024 to 42 in 2025.

Other indicators

Overall at NEL level general performance has been maintained or improved across most indicators, although most remain below the national average.

Key areas of improvement for NEL include:

• Ease of contacting the GP practice has improved by two percentage points to 51% (against national increase of three percentage points to 53%).
• Experience of contacting the GP practice has improved by two percentage points to 64% (against a national increase of three percentage points to 70%).
• The amount of waiting time from booking until the appointment taking place has improved by two percentage points to 59% (against a national increase of one percentage point to 67%).
• Need to access alternative services due to practice closure has reduced by one percentage point to 37% (against a national average of 31% (no change on last year)).
• Numbers having an agreed healthcare plan have increased by two percentage points to 51% (against a national average of 45% (no change on last year)).

Other indicators remain generally stable compared to last year (based on analysis of positive responses), and similar to national trends.

The main indicator which shows a negative is ‘experience of healthcare professional listening at last appointment’, for which the positive responses reduced by one percentage point to 82% (against a national average of 87% (no change on last year)).

Other trends

In NEL, there is a general trend toward increasing number of face-to-face appointments over other modes of appointment, against a general trend toward use of digital/online NHS services (for accessing information, booking appointments etc). This appears to be consistent with national trends.

There is also a slight increase in the number of patients accessing pharmacy instead of their general practice, and moreso than other NHS services.

Again, these trends are testament to the efforts of practices and pharmacies to maximise access and increase digital tools.

Next steps

As mentioned above, NHS NEL will be taking a holistic approach to reviewing the results at individual practice level. This will involve looking at a whole range of indicators and data, considering any issues and initiatives over the last year, and engaging with individual practices.

As part of this work, we are keen to highlight examples of how practices have made improvements – so that other practices can consider but also to showcase to other stakeholders and local residents. If you would like to share your efforts, please make contact via the Place primary care team.

Access the full results at practice, PCN, ICS, region and national levels.