General practice across England: Performance Tracker Local

This report, the second in a new IfG series – funded by the Nuffield Foundation – on public service performance at the local level, shows that patient satisfaction is higher in GP practices that have more GPs (particularly GP partners), have smaller list sizes, deliver more GP appointments and do more of those appointments face-to-face. Additional direct patient care staff – such as physiotherapists, pharmacists and care co-ordinators – are not associated with higher satisfaction.

Despite that, all those trends are heading in the opposite direction: the number of GP partners continues to fall, particularly among those aged under 40. GP practices do far more appointments remotely than they did before the pandemic. The closure and merging of practices means that patient list sizes continue to creep up.

In addition, the addition of almost 40,000 direct patient care staff since 2019 does not seem to have improved satisfaction. 

The report argues that the government needs to urgently address the crisis in the GP partner workforce, aim to improve the conversion rate from GP traineeship into the GP workforce, understand how to use the expanded direct patient care workforce most effectively, and better communicate how its reform programme will improve patients' experience of general practice.