Welcome

This site is designed to provide information to patients registered with a GP who have been selected to take part in the GP Patient Survey, as well as to the general public who may be interested in knowing more about the survey.

This Department of Health survey, run by survey specialist Ipsos MORI, assesses patients’ experiences of local NHS services.

Since July 2011, a different coloured questionnaire has been sent out twice a year to different patients registered with a GP. The new GP Patient Survey gives patients the opportunity to comment on their experience of their GP practice, and some other NHS services. The new questions ask patients about their experience of accessing care from their practice (from making an appointment, experience of reception through to the clinical consultation) as well as asking about other services such as dentistry and out of hours provision.

The new survey also supports a number of indicators in the NHS Outcomes Framework, which is used to assess how well the NHS is performing, leading to quality improvement throughout the NHS.  This means we are asking more questions about patients’ own health so we can monitor how the health of the population is improving over time.

Important note (2011-2012 Survey)

Please note that in addition to new questions, and a change in the frequency of mailings from quarterly to twice a year, there have been a number of refinements to the weighting scheme. Weighting is standard practice in surveys of this nature and is required in order to ensure that findings are representative of the wider population, and not just those who respond to the survey. For example, younger people are less likely to respond to the survey than older people.  If weighting was not applied, then survey results would be skewed in favour of older people.

Results from the first wave of the 2011-2012 survey have, for the first time, taken into account neighbourhood statistics such as levels of deprivation, in order to improve reliability of findings further. Please refer to the FAQ section of this website for more details about the weighting scheme and rationale for refinements.

Due to the above changes, no results from 2011-12 can be compared to previous years, even where questions remain the same.

Ipsos MORI cannot accept any more blue-coloured questionnaires which were mailed out in January 2012. This survey has now closed.The results of this survey will be published in June 2012.

The results of the survey run between July and September 2011 were published in January and can be accessed here.