Half of Britons avoid calling GP when they are ill, survey finds

Almost half the public delay or avoid contacting their GP surgery when they are ill, mainly because they think they will struggle to get an appointment.Overall 48% of people across the UK did not bother to ask their family doctor for help – either initially or at all – when they got sick over the past year, a survey found.Just over a quarter (27%) opted to manage the ailment themselves or waited for it to go away, despite doctors fearing that shunning GP care could seriously damage the person’s health.The findings underline the deep public concern about the ability to get fast access to vital NHS services such as A&E, GP care, hospital treatment and an ambulance if they call 999.The large number of people not calling their GP practice emerged in a survey that pollsters Ipsos undertook for the Health Foundation thinktank. Three in 10 did not expect to be offered a GP appointment at a suitable time and 17% thought contacting their practice would be hard.“General practice is the front door of the health service, and all patients should be able to see their GP when they need to. So it is worrying to hear that some might be delaying or avoiding seeking care because they think getting an appointment will be difficult,” said Prof Victoria Tzortziou Brown, the chair of the Royal College of GPs.A third of Britons have decided not to go to A&E in the past two years despite needing treatment, because they expected a long delay before being seen, according to separate polling by Savanta, carried out last month for the Liberal Democrats.Helen Maguire, a Lib Dem health spokesperson, said: “Patients deserve so much better. It is heartbreaking to think of elderly people or parents with sick children sitting at home in pain because they have lost faith that the system will be there for them.”The thinktank said the findings should “ring alarm bells” about the government’s plan to move a lot of healthcare from hospitals into community settings, one of the “three big shifts” in its 10-year plan for transforming the NHS in England.“Persistent public concerns about problems in general practice and A&E – the ‘front doors’ of the NHS – mean policymakers may need to reassess their priorities”, it added.Ipsos’s representative survey of 2,214 adults, undertaken in December, uncovered widespread gloom and pessimism about the state of the NHS. It also found that: Faster access to GPs and A&E are the public’s top priorities for the NHS. Only 32% believe the NHS provides a good service nationally. 42% think the standard of NHS care has worsened over the past year and only 12% think that it has improved. 47% fear NHS care will decline further over the next year and just 15% expect it to get better Wes Streeting, the health secretary in England, and his counterparts in Edinburgh and Cardiff will be concerned that only 15% of the public think the government in their nation is pursuing the right policies to revive the health service. Far more – 54% – disagree.The findings emerged as Streeting published the new GP contract that sets out what types of care family doctors in England will provide during 2025-26.It obliges GP practices to see all patients with urgent medical needs on the day they get in touch and has reallocated £300m of funding to let surgeries hire 1,600 more doctors.Dr Katie Bramall, the chair of the British Medical Association’s GP committee, said: “Hard-working family doctors will be deeply concerned about setting up even more unrealistic expectations of unlimited same‑day urgent care provision alongside potential barriers being put in place around specialist referrals, all while trying to keep practices open and prevent even more surgery closures.”She criticised Streeting for not negotiating the contract with the BMA, as had happened for many years. The health secretary, frustrated at the BMA opposing his plans to give patients online access to GPs during working hours, instead consulted a range of GP and patient bodies.