Impact of primary care funding on patient satisfaction: a retrospective longitudinal study of English general practice, 2013–2016

BACKGROUND: Providing high-quality clinical care and good patient experience are priorities for most healthcare systems. AIM: To understand the relationship between general practice funding and patient-reported experience. DESIGN AND SETTING: Retrospective longitudinal study of English general practice-level data for the financial years 2013–2014 to 2016–2017. METHOD: Data for all general practices in England from the General and Personal Medical Services database were linked to patient experience data from the GP Patient Survey (GPPS). Panel data multivariate regression was used to estimate the impact of general practice funding (current or lagged 1 year) per patient on GPPS-reported patient experience of access, continuity of care, professionalism, and overall satisfaction. Confounding was controlled for by practice, demographic, and GPPS responder characteristics, and for year effects. RESULTS: Inflation-adjusted mean total annual funding per patient was £133.66 (standard deviation [SD] = £39.46). In all models, higher funding was associated with better patient experience. In the model with lagged funding and practice fixed effects (model 6), a 1 SD increase in funding was associated with increases in scores in the domains of access (1.18%; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.89 to 1.47), continuity (0.86%; 95% CI = 0.19 to 1.52), professionalism of GP (0.47%; 95% CI = 0.22 to 0.71), professionalism of nurse (0.51%; 95% CI = 0.24 to 0.77), professionalism of receptionist (0.51%; 95% CI = 0.24 to 0.78), and in overall satisfaction (0.88%; 95% CI = 0.52 to 1.24). CONCLUSION: Better-funded general practices were more likely to have higher reported patient experience ratings across a wide range of domains.