How Long Are GPs Appointments?

How long are GPs appointments?

In most General Practices, 10 minutes is allocated for most appointments. But it is thought that:

• 30% last more than 15 minutes
• 20% last more than 20 minutes.

Note. There is not much good evidence for these numbers.

But what is the average length of a GP appointment in the UK?

Again, we don’t know for certain.

The length of appointment is (strangely) not routinely measured by GPs, NHS England or the DHSC. It is also not collected for hospital appointments.

So, what do we do know? In one study (Gopfert, 2021) the mean duration of GP appointment was 10.9 minutes. This was based on GP and GP registrar (GPs in training) face-to-face appointents only.

And 10.9 minutes is an average. So the range is likely to be 5-15 minutes. The study made other interesting observations:

• Females had longer consultations (mean duration 11.0 minutes) and more consultations (mean 8.6 over 2 years) than males (mean 10.9 minutes and 6.7 consultations respectively)
• Older people did not have longer consultations, but they had more consultations compared with younger people
• Compared with fully qualified GPs, GP registrars (GPs in training) had longer consultations with a mean duration of 14.4 minutes
• Mean consultation length was shorter for people living in the most compared with the least deprived fifth of areas (10.7 versus 11.2 minutes)
• Slightly shorter consultations were seen for patients who were not multimorbid (10.8 minutes compared with 11.0 for patients who are multimorbid) – interestingly, not much different. The reason for this is unclear
• Interestingly, those with mental health conditions had a similar consultation time (11.1 minutes) to those with only physical health conditions (10.9 minutes). One might expect them to have longer appointments.

How does GP appointment duration in the UK compare to other countries?

Not great. See the graph below.

Even though the UK is actually a bit above average, we have one of the shorter durations compared to other (comparable) developed countries.

We are not the only developed country with shorter appointments. Austria and Germany have shorter durations than us – also not good.

Note the range is wide – from 22 minutes in Sweden to 2 minutes in Pakistan.

(Irving, 2017)

How long should they be?

No one knows.

The Royal College of General Practice, in 2019, recommended that they should be at least 15 minutes. This is MyHSN’s view – and longer, if needed.

Why? Hospital doctors usually allocate 30 mins for a new appointment and 15 minutes for a follow-up.

So a minimum of 15 minutes seems reasonable, especially as many appointments will be for patients with new problems – and so, may need to be examined. This takes time.

Why is 10 minutes the ‘standard’ time allocated?

This is a choice – by GPs. There is no rule from NHS Engaknd or DHSC that it has to be 10 minutes. It is just the norm.

Most General Practices are run as small businesses that are quasi-independent of the NHS. So they can choose to have 15 minute appointments if they wish. And some do.

They could choose 2 mins or 20 mins as well.

Of course if they offered 15 minutes appointments as routine, there would be less slots available – and some patients would wait longer to get appointments.

Well. That is the conventional wisdom. It could also be true that if they offered 20 mins slots (like Sweden does, presumably), they might sort patients more completely, and there would be less need for follow up appointments.

Double appointments

It is your right to ask for a double appointment (20 mins). Why not do this if you think you problems are complex, and you need more time to explain them, or you have more than one problem.