Royston Smith – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Royston Smith on 2016-06-06.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what the average proportion of GP’s working time spent outside of the surgery is.

Alistair Burt

The information is not held centrally. As general practitioners (GPs) are independent contractors, it is for each practice to determine how they run their practice in order to meet the reasonable needs of their patients.

The Department commissions a GP Worklife Survey and this is carried out by the Manchester Centre for Health Economics at the University of Manchester on behalf of the Policy Research Unit in Commissioning and the Healthcare System (PRUComm).

In 2015, respondents were asked to indicate how much of their time was spent on external meetings, for example, meetings of the clinical commissioning group. Responses show that GPs spend 8.4% of their time on administration, 3.5% on external meetings and 6.3% on other activities.

The full report can be found at:

http://www.population-health.manchester.ac.uk/healtheconomics/research/Reports/EighthNationalGPWorklifeSurveyreport/EighthNationalGPWorklifeSurveyreport.pdf