General Practitioners: Standards

(asked on 21st October 2014) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what the Government's benchmark waiting time is to see a General Practitioner for a routine appointment; and how that benchmark was set.


Answered by
Dan Poulter Portrait
Dan Poulter
This question was answered on 27th October 2014

The Government does not set a benchmark for waiting times to see a general practitioner (GP) for a routine appointment.

The 48 hour waiting time target was removed because it as seen as too inflexible in meeting the needs of patients. The GP patient survey showed that the proportion of people who wanted to get an appointment within 2 days (and were able to) actually fell between 2008-09 and 2009-10 i.e. when the target was in place.

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