The first national survey of patients' views of the National Health Service has found that people with a full-time occupation cannot access general medical services as readily as they would like.
The survey, of 1,000 people from each of the 100 health authorities in England, achieved a 60 per cent response rate and found that people in paid work or full-time education wanted better access to services, often outside normal surgery hours, to fit in with their commitments. It also found that people aged under 45 years and those from ethnic minority groups were generally less satisfied than the rest of the population with the level of service they obtained.
On the positive side, the survey found that four out of five NHS patients could get appointments with their GPs as soon as they thought necessary and that the same number had actually seen their GPs in the previous 12 months. Almost all of them (79 per cent) considered their GPs knew what treatment was best. Even more (84 per cent) believed that the right diagnosis had been reached.
However, 15 per cent of respondents overall (20 per cent for people in work) said that they had put off going to their GP at least once in the past year because of inconvenient surgery hours. Nearly a third said that they usually had to wait two to three days to get an appointment with the GP of their choice and a quarter said that they usually had to wait at least four days for an appointment.
Detailed results of the survey, broken down by health authority, are available on the internet at http://193.32.28.83/public/nhssurvey.htm.