Key general practice statistics and insights

Key general practice statistics for England

Last updated: Wednesday 6 March 2024

The RCGP has collated the following key statistics to provide an easily accessible source of information on the important work being delivered by general practice as well as the challenges facing the profession. This is designed to be a helpful resource for communicating with the public, press and policymakers.

These figures will be reviewed on a monthly basis, and updated as new data is released. Please note that all figures are currently for England only. We are working to produce similar information for each nation of the UK where possible, given the data available, and will update this page in due course.

If you wish to download or print this page for reference, you can do so by clicking the three dots in the top right-hand corner and selecting 'print' followed by 'save as PDF'.

General practice appointment data1

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Monthly appointment data, December 2023

  • Total consultations: General practice staff delivered 25.9 million consultations in December 2023.
  • Appointments on the same day: 11.8 million consultations were delivered on the same day as booking (1.3 million more than in December 2019), this was 46% of all appointments.
  • Appointments within two weeks: 21.6 million consultations were delivered within two weeks of booking (2.1 million more than in December 2019), this was 84% of all appointments.
  • Face-to-face: 17.1 million consultations were carried out face to face (compared to 18.8 million in December 2019), this was 67% of all appointments.
  • Appointments by GPs: 12 million consultations were led by GPs (compared to 12.2 million in December 2019), this was 47% of all appointments.

Patients and workload in general practice data2

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Data on numbers of GPs2

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Multidisciplinary Team (MDT) staff numbers2

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Data on healthcare inequalities

  • Practices in areas with the highest levels of income deprivation have on average 300 (14.4%) more patients per fully qualified GP than practices with the lowest levels of income deprivation (as of October 2022). This discrepancy has increased 50% since Oct 20183.
  • Research from the Health Foundation in 2021 showed that after accounting for the increased workload associated with greater health needs in more deprived areas, GPs in deprived parts of England received 7% less funding per need-adjusted patient than GPs in affluent areas4.

Investment in primary care

  • The NHS confederation has calculated that if funding patterns across all areas matched those areas that increased spending the most, every additional £1 spent on primary care would increase economic output by £145.

RCGP surveys

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond, horizons continue to shift rapidly. The RCGP always works to place the GP voice at the centre of decisions affecting the delivery of care and patient health. One of the ways in which we can do this is by running short-timescale ad-hoc surveys to ensure that we know the issues GPs are facing, and their extent.

We use the results to inform conversations we have with key Government and NHS decision-makers, to feed into policy statements and reports and to support our campaigns and communications. This page includes the topline results from those surveys.

Survey results

GP experiences: RCGP Tracking Survey of 1,855 GPs, 20236

In our latest annual survey, many GPs told us that they don't have sufficient time. This is having an impact on the quality of patient care that can be delivered:

  • 56% of GPs say they don't have enough time in appointments to adequately assess and treat patients.
  • 57% of GPs say they don't have enough time in appointments to build the patient relationships they need to deliver quality care.
  • 46% of GPs say they don't have enough time in appointments to ensure patient safety.

Read the full results of the RCGP Tracking Survey 2023 (PDF file, 863 KB).

COVID-19 surveys


Contact us for more information