GP appointments: are a quarter unable to get one within a week?
7 April 2015
In a speech today Ed Miliband has said that a quarter of people can't get an appointment with their GP within a week. It's a claim he's made before.
The best figures on GP waiting times show that 11% of patients couldn't get an appointment at all the last time they contacted their GP surgery, while another 14% saw or spoke to someone a week or more later. We had to do a bit of number crunching on that.
So it's fair to say a quarter of patients don't get an appointment within a week. However, that doesn't mean they can't get one. Some people would have been happy to book that far ahead, for instance if they wanted to get a repeat prescription or otherwise if their need for an appointment wasn't urgent.
