Around 2.4 million people, aged 16 and over, who are registered with a GP practice in England will receive an invitation to take part in Europe’s biggest patient experience survey in early January. The answers we get help the NHS to improve local health services for people like you and your family. It is important that we hear about your experiences even if you haven’t visited your GP practice recently, or if you have filled in a questionnaire before.
The invitations go out mostly by letter to a random selection of people who have been registered with their GP practice for at least 6 months. The survey team at NHS England will follow this up with a text message reminder (where a mobile number is available) alongside further paper questionnaires to encourage as high a response rate as possible.
If you receive a survey, please do take the time to take part. It provides vital information to the NHS to identify what’s working well and what can be improved. It helps to identify inequalities in experience too, as the results can be analysed across different protected characteristics.
If you want to check out how your practice faired in last year’s survey, take a look at the survey website: https://gp-patient.co.uk/practices-search
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is this survey happening?
The GP Patient Survey is designed to give patients the opportunity to feed back about their experiences of their GP practice.
The survey asks about your experiences of your local GP practice and other local NHS services, and includes questions about your general health. The survey includes questions about a range of issues, such as how easy or hard it is to make an appointment at your practice, satisfaction with opening hours, the quality of care received from your GP and practice nurses, amongst other things.
The answers we get help the NHS to improve local health services for people like you and your family., It is important that we hear about your experiences even if you haven’t visited your GP practice in a long time, or if you have filled in a questionnaire before.
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When is the survey sent out?
The survey is sent out every year in January.
This is the seventeenth year that the survey has been carried out in England. Between July 2011 and March 2016, the survey happened twice a year, before that, it was sent out on a quarterly basis (April 2009-March 2011) and before that, every year (January 2007-March 2009).
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Why was I invited to take part?
You have been invited to take part because you were randomly selected from all adult patients registered with a GP in England. About 2 million adult patients registered with a GP in England have been selected to receive the GP Patient Survey this year.
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Why haven’t I been invited to take part in the survey? How can I take part?
The survey is being sent to a random selection of people who are registered with a GP in England. To ensure the survey is valid, Ipsos cannot invite people who have not already been selected at random to take part in the survey.
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How did you get my contact details?
Ipsos is sending you this questionnaire on behalf of NHS England. Names were chosen at random from the NHS list of patients registered with a GP. NHS England has shared a limited amount of your personal data so that Ipsos can invite you to take part in this research. This data includes:
Your name and address
GP practice code and NHS number
Gender and month/year of birth
Mobile telephone number (if available)
Ipsos will keep your data confidential and will only use your contact details to invite you to take part in the survey. Once the survey is finished, Ipsos MORI will securely destroy your contact details. Ipsos has no information about anyone’s health.
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What is your legal basis for processing my personal data?
NHS England is carrying out this research to help the NHS improve GP practices and other local NHS services. This will help them better meet local needs in response to patient responses. They have a legal duty (under section 13Q of the NHS Act 2006) to involve the public in the commissioning of services for NHS patients.
NHS England is the data controller for the processing of personal data for the GP Patient Survey, which means that they are responsible for making sure that the processing complies with the UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
NHS England’s basis for lawful processing for the GP Patient Survey is Article 6(1) (e) - “processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in the controller”. Processing special category personal data (such as data about health, racial or ethnic origin or sexual orientation) must meet an additional condition, Article 9(2)(h) “processing is necessary for the purposes of preventive or occupational medicine, for the assessment of the working capacity of the employee, medical diagnosis, the provision of health or social care or treatment or the management of health or social care systems and services”. This means that NHS England can use the personal data they hold about you for research with appropriate safeguards in place. Ipsos is the data processor acting on instructions of NHS England to deliver the survey.
You can access NHS England’s Privacy Notice at https://www.england.nhs.uk/contact-us/privacy/privacy-notice/.
Taking part in the survey is voluntary. However, if you do not want to take part in the future, please email GPPatientSurvey@ipsos.com. In the email, please include your access code (located at the top of the letter or on the front of the questionnaire) and indicate that you wish to opt out.