GP practices in Herefordshire and Worcestershire have, once again, scored better than the national average in key areas in this year’s GP Patient Survey results reflecting their hard work and dedication to providing and improving services across the two counties.
The results of the 2025 GP Patient Survey were published last week and showed that residents in the two counties had a more positive experience of their practice than those elsewhere in the country and came out on top in the country, up from fourth last year.
The survey, which was conducted by Ipsos MORI, took place between December 2024 – April 2025.
Herefordshire and Worcestershire comes top in the country with 81% (80.9%) of patients surveyed said their overall experience of their GP practice was good or very good, which is up from last year (79%) and above the National average of 75%.
All GP practices across Herefordshire and Worcestershire offer online services- including through the NHS App where 43% are ordering online prescriptions (maintaining last year’s % (43%) and matching National average of 43%. 59% said they found it easy to use their practice website, ahead of the National average of 51%, and 58% found it easy to contact the GP practice using the NHS App, again ahead of the National average of 49%.
88% reported that receptionists were helpful (National 83%), up from 87% in 2024.
61% of people felt that it was easy to get through to someone on the phone, this was up from last year (58%) and again beating the National average of 53% for 2025.
Majority of patients (93%) say they were happy with their level of involvement with decisions made about their care (National 91%), 89% felt the person they saw listened to them (National 87%), and 88% felt they were treated with care and concern (National 86%).
For dental access 77% said they were able to get an NHS dental appointment, which although fell slightly below the National average of 78% is up from 73% in 2024.
88% reported positive experiences of using pharmacy services (88% National).
Charmaine Hawker, Director of Delegated Commissioning NHS Herefordshire and Worcestershire said: “This is yet another set of encouraging results for Herefordshire and Worcestershire practices, who continue to work to improve access to GP services in increasingly challenging circumstances.
“This also follows the recent success in the ONS Health Information Survey results where we are in the top performing ICBs in the country for patient experience.
“In the face of growing demand our practices continue to make improvements with introducing improved telephone systems, enabling better access to features of the NHS App such as ordering repeat prescriptions, accessing medical records and receiving messages about their care and treatment.
“We acknowledge that dental access has also been an issue across the two counties, but it is encouraging to see that access has improved over last year. We have more work to do to get our access to national levels, and every effort is being made to improve this.
“There is always improvement to be made to ensure people have equal access across our two counties to the care they need when they need it, in a way that works for them, but we are really pleased to see the improvements our practices have made over the last year.”
