COVID-19 and patient-reported experience of general practice in England

Background The COVID-19 pandemic led to a rapid transformation of the operating model for GP practices in England, with a switch towards the use of remote rather than face-to-face appointments.

Aim To assess changes in the quality of general practice in England over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic based on patients’ views of their experiences.

Design & setting Analysis of practice-level multicategory response data on patient-reported experience measures (PREMs) from annual General Practice Patient Surveys for 2018 to 2023.

Method Healthcare quality changes at both practice and national levels were assessed using an index sensitive to changes in the distribution of patient responses across the full set of PREM response categories not just in the proportion meeting some binary quality threshold.

Results Patients’ reported experience of general practice improved nationally between the 2020 and 2021 surveys in spite of the restrictions on the operation of GP practices, fell sharply between 2021 and 2022 and then resumed the pre-pandemic downward trend. Variation in healthcare quality changes at the practice level was considerable between all consecutive years.

Conclusions Changes in patients’ reports of their experience of general practice over the course of the pandemic reflected broader shifts in public attitudes towards the NHS as well as real changes in the nature and quality of service delivery.