Cloud Based Telephony in General Practice: Supporting Information

These statistics are in the testing phase and not yet fully developed because of issues or features such as poor coverage, poor data quality or because the data is still in evaluation. Once the data quality and coverage improves the data will be published.

This data will be classed as statistics in development for several reasons, notably:

• This is a new collection, and not all suppliers of Cloud Based Telephony are sending data.
• Since the data collection is new, we are still evaluating the overall data quality, completeness, and coverage.

NHS England regularly ask for feedback from users of its publications, and we are particularly keen to receive comments and feedback on our experimental statistics, to help with further development.

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This information will be published to understand more about the scale of patient demand for general practice services, in particular the number of calls into GP practices and how these are handled.

There are many suppliers of Cloud Based Telephony Systems for GP practices. More information about system suppliers is available in the Data Quality section. We are working with suppliers to enable the provision of data, and as data becomes available it will be included.

It is important to note that the data items collected, and overall system functionality varies by supplier and by practice.

The publication will present a high-level time series from October 2024 onwards, showing monthly counts of:

• Practices
  • open practices
  • practices that have agreed to participate in the collection and whether any information has been suppressed
  • practices for which their telephony supplier has provided data

Data provided by the digital telephony system suppliers enables the following information to be derived:

• Calls into the practice
  • total Inbound calls
  • total calls leaving the system via the Interactive Voice Recognition (IVR)* where the patient has been directed to a service without reaching the receptionist
  • total calls being answered, the wait time for those calls to be answered and the duration of the call
  • total calls missed (ended whilst queuing to speak to a member of staff), and the time the patient waited on the call before hanging up
• calls resulting in a call back request and subsequent call backs made
• count and average of call outcome by weekday and time of call

*Abandoned in the Interactive Voice Response (IVR) stage of the call prior to joining the queue to be answered, in response to an automated message or diversion.

It is important to note that no patient identifiable or patient-clinical information is collected or available in this release.

This data cannot tell you:

• the reason for the call, for example whether the call was to request an appointment, enquire about registering as a new patient
• who made the call, for example whether this was a patient, someone providing a service to the GP practice such as maintenance or business support or a call unrelated to the services provided
• information recorded on any conversations that happen during the call or actions resulting from these conversations, for example an appointment being booked with a clinician, the patient being given some test results or signposting the patient to a different service
• who answered the call, for example whether the call answered by a receptionist, a clinician or another member of practice staff
• the number of unique numbers calling into the GP surgery - this data collects only the number of calls into the GP practice, so this could include the same person ringing more than once resulting in different outcomes

The data is collected from system suppliers and the system’s primary focus is to deal with calls. We have provided guidance to help determine the call flows we would like to record as part of this collection. More information on the data specification can be found on our website: Cloud-Based Telephony Data Collection.

This is a new dataset and data quality is likely to be variable.  We are working with suppliers to ensure the data is provided consistently across suppliers and completed to a high standard and to improve the overall coverage of the data.

Since October 2024, NHS England has been onboarding call data from the following suppliers:

• Babblevoice
• Check Communication
• Ctalk Limited
• Gamma
• ITS Digital
• MPS Networks Ltd
• Redcentric
• X-on Health

However, not all suppliers have been able to submit data but are engaged and will be providing data in the future.

Data will be available only for practices that have agreed to participate in the collection, and given their consent for their system supplier to submit data on their behalf. Practices that are yet to sign up are encouraged to do so to meet their contractual obligations and improve the national understanding of patient demand as well as system availability and usage.

Cloud Based Telephony system suppliers are providing the data directly.  Where a supplier is not yet able to provide this information, but the practice has agreed to participate the data will be included once the system supplier can provide the data.

This spreadsheet provides information on GP Practices in scope for this data collection and details which practices have agreed to participate and whether the supplier has submitted data, once this reaches sufficient data quality and coverage the data will be published.  

Call Outcomes

There are four outcomes as a result of a call made to general practice:

Calls dealt with by general practice:

• Answered calls: Calls answered by a practice staff member
• Calls ending during the IVR: Calls that end during the Interactive Voice Response (IVR) stage of the call - this may be as a result of being signposted to another service, the patient checking/verifying an existing appointment or being directed to another contact route, e.g. online consultation
• Calls resulting in a callback request: The caller is given the option to receive a callback from the practice when they reach the front of the queue, or at a specified time selected by the caller

Calls not dealt with by general practice:

• Missed calls: Calls which reach the call queue, but go unanswered by the practice, including voicemails

Call flow diagram

List Size

GP practices with a list size of 0 will not be included in the dashboard. 

Per 1,000 population calculations

For this calculation the most recent list size is used.  For example if CBT practice data for May 2025 is available we will used the May 2025 list size data for all months.  Please bear this in mind when looking at historical information if a practice list size is very small or if it has had large changes over time.