Existing online consultation tools come up in 1 in 7 access complaints from patients leaving their practice, Healthtech-1 finds.

LONDON, ENGLAND (20th October 2026) – Many patients leaving their GP practice say digital front doors are shutting them out. New analysis from the team behind a new GP registration and appointment site, Bookable.health, of patient feedback collected over 60 days finds that digital routes into general practice are a significant source of frustration for patients who have just left a practice.

The data comes from patients registering with a new GP practice through Healthtech-1’s Automated Registrations tool. They rate the practice they have just left from 1 to 5 and add feedback. The analysis covers 71,579 comments collected from 4 July to 2 September 2026, from patients at 95% of GP practices in England. It finds that widely used digital routes into general practice, such as online consultation forms and GP appointment booking through the NHS App, are shutting doors more than opening them.

Half of complaints are about access. 1 in 7 of those are about digital tools.

Of 26,819 negative or mixed comments from patients about their previous GP practice, these are the main findings.

• 53% are about access. 14,100 comments were about not being able to get an appointment, waiting too long, the way appointments are booked, or difficulty getting through to the practice. Over the 60 days, that is about 235 patients a day in our sample.

• 13.5% of access complaints are about digital tools. 1,899 comments, roughly one in seven, were about using digital or online consultation tools. That is about 32 patients a day in our sample.

• 1 in 4 name a specific product.

Other things patients talked about include the attitude of staff, communication, referrals and records, clinical care, prescriptions and travel to the practice.

What patients say is going wrong with digital access

The chart shows the share of digital complaints that raise each problem. Patients often raise more than one, so the shares add up to more than 100%.

In their words

Each comment comes from a real patient with a real registration. They were asked "do you have any feedback for your previous practice?" as part of the registration process. Quotes are anonymous and appear as written.

These patients have just changed practice, so they have a fresh, direct comparison. What they describe is not a rejection of digital tools. They are asking for a route that works and a person to fall back on when it doesn’t.

Digital access is central to national policy and Bookable.health is a way forward.

• Since October 2025, GP practices in England have had to keep their online consultation tool open throughout core hours (8am to 6:30pm, Monday to Friday).

• The 2026/27 GP contract adds that these tools must not cap requests and that non-urgent requests get a response by the end of the next working day.

Sources: Government announcement on GP access, 24 February 2026 and the BMA summary of the 2026/27 GP contract changes.

Technology can be a tool to enable access in primary care. However, our data shows potentially thousands of people each year are being blocked from accessing primary care because of, in their own words, the way these tools work.

The Bookable.health platform by Healthtech-1 helps navigate patients to the right place, first time by surfacing primary care capacity and supporting GP practices to manage their inbound requests using doctor-developed AI. We’re designing Bookable.health hand in hand with the GPs and administrators who use it every day.

About these figures

• What counts as access: comments that mention appointment supply, waiting times, booking method or phone and contact access. A comment can raise several issues and is counted once.

• The sample: 71,579 comments from 4 July to 2 September 2026, covering 95% of GP practices in England, after removing duplicates and empty entries. It is a large self-selecting sample of patients who changed practice, not a random sample of all patients.

• Verified patients: each comment is linked to a real patient registration, so each is one verified individual, unlike Google Reviews. We have not fact-checked what patients say.

• Classification: comments were first classified using LLMs, with three rounds of human review on random samples.

• Quotes: anonymous and as written, with spacing tidied. Square brackets and ellipses show edits. No patient names, practice names or full comment text are published.

About Healthtech-1

Healthtech-1 is on a mission to unlock access to care. We’ve built bookable.health to navigate patients to the right place, first time, automating registrations, triaging patients and booking appointments. Our platforms are used by 1,663 GP practices across England. We’ve twice been voted Digital Solutions Provider of the Year at the General Practice Awards, in 2024 and 2025. Our team works out of a GP practice in Stratford, East London.

For enquiries, please contact press@healthtech1.uk.