General Practice In-hours Activity Visualisation
As at 31 January 2025
Official statistics in development
- Published
- 04 March 2025 (Latest release)
- Type
- Statistical report
- Author
- Public Health Scotland
About this release
This release by Public Health Scotland (PHS) presents General Practice (GP) activity data extracted from approximately 94% of practices across Scotland by NHS board and Health and Social Care Partnership (HSCP).
Statistics are provided on the number of encounters which were recorded each month by the general practice team, both clinical and non-clinical, in the period January 2018 to January 2025. Encounters are classified as direct or indirect. Direct encounters involve some form of direct contact for clinical care between clinical staff and a patient e.g. face to face or telephone consultations. Indirect encounters include any activity not involving direct contact with patients e.g. reviewing prescriptions, clinical and non-clinical administration.
Please note the rates per 1,000 registered patients presented in this document have been adjusted to take account of the variation in the number of working days in each month.
Main points
- In January 2025, the total number of General Practice encounters recorded by the whole practice team including admin staff was approximately 8.2 million or 1,430 per 1,000 registered patients . The rate per 1,000 registered patients increased by 7.2% compared to the previous month (December 2024) and increased by 4.1% compared to the previous year (January 2024).
- In January 2025, approximately 2.9 million encounters (35.3%) were classified as Direct which gives a rate of 505 encounters per 1,000 registered patients. The rate of Direct encounters per 1,000 registered patients increased by 5.7% compared to the previous month (December 2024) and decreased by 6.5% compared to the previous year (January 2024). In addition to the Direct encounters recorded in January 2025 there was also 1.7 million Indirect encounters recorded by Clinical staff.
- Approximately 2.4 million (81.7%) of Direct encounters were recorded as physical (face to face) and 0.5 million (18.3%) were recorded as virtual (technology assisted).
- Over the Winter period October 2024 to January 2025 there were 11.4 million encounters classified as Direct. The rate of encounters per 1,000 registered patients has decreased by 4.9% so far this Winter compared to the Winter period October 2023 to January 2024 and decreased by 2.4% compared to the Winter period October 2018 to January 2019 before the Covid pandemic.
- Since January 2018 there has been a steady increase in the number of Indirect encounters recorded in GP practices. The number of Direct encounters recorded has varied over the timeseries but in recent months has been similar to the number of encounters recorded at the beginning of 2018.
Note: Full definitions of the encounter class are available on the dashboard.
Data Quality
Not all activity is recorded in the clinical systems and information on the complexity or duration of the activity is currently unavailable. Therefore, the activity reported does not represent all the work happening within general practice.
Data contained within this release is not directly comparable to other publications on GP activity ongoing in NHS England or NHS Wales (NWIS), due to differences in methodology of counting and classifying GP activity.
The data remains subject to change and monthly figures and comparisons should be used with caution. Some of the monthly variation in activity figures will be caused by differing numbers of working days in each month, in the non-adjusted rates and figures. Improvements in the recording of activity on GP clinical systems may also affect some trends when looking at activity over time.
Further information
Data presented in the visualisation are subject to change.
Where it is identified data are excluded from that months release due to technical issues, these data will be updated the following month.
The next release of this publication will be 1 April 2025.
General enquiries
If you have an enquiry relating to this publication, please contact David Redpath at phs.generalpractice@phs.scot.
Media enquiries
If you have a media enquiry relating to this publication, please contact the Communications and Engagement team.
Requesting other formats and reporting issues
If you require publications or documents in other formats, please email phs.otherformats@phs.scot.
To report any issues with a publication, please email phs.generalpublications@phs.scot.
Older versions of this publication
Versions of this publication released before 16 March 2020 may be found on the Data and Intelligence, Health Protection Scotland or Improving Health websites.