General Practice in-hours activity visualisation
As at 31 January 2026

About this release

This monthly release by Public Health Scotland (PHS) is part of a joint project with NHS National Services Scotland to collect data, intelligence and report on activity in General Practice (GP). It presents information about the number of patient "encounters" recorded in the clinical systems of General Practices. Please note that “encounters” are not synonymous with “appointments” as they do not necessarily involve direct contact with a patient.

This summary focuses on encounters conducted by clinicians, classified as direct or indirect. Direct encounters involve 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 patient contact e.g. reviewing prescriptions or clinical administration.

This publication presents data on encounters recorded by the whole practice team (including admin staff) by NHS Board and Health and Social Care Partnership (HSCP). Data was extracted from circa 93% of practices across Scotland and covers the period January 2018 to January 2026.

Main points

Encounter rates per 1,000 registered patients take account of the variation in the number of working days in each month. The adjusted rates account for what the rate would have been if every month had twenty-one working days, the average number of working days in a month.

• In January 2026, the rate of encounters with all clinicians was 816 per 1,000 registered patients. This rate is 5.2% higher than the previous 3-month average. The average rate of encounters with all clinicians for the past 12 months (Feb 25 – Jan 26) was 3.1% higher than the previous 12-month average (Feb 24 – Jan 25).
• In January 2026, the rate of direct encounters with all clinicians was 446 per 1,000 registered patients. This rate is 5.7% higher than the previous 3-month average. The average rate of direct encounters with all clinicians for the past 12 months (Feb 25 – Jan 26) was 4.2% higher than the previous 12-month average (Feb 24 – Jan 25).
• Since January 2018 there has been a steady increase in the number of indirect encounters recorded by clinicians. However, the number of direct encounters recorded by clinicians has been stable over the course of the time series with a slight increase in the last few months. There is an increasing trend in the number of unmapped direct encounters which could not be assigned to a specific health care professional (HCP) group because it is not clear what type of HCP recorded the encounter.
• In January 2026, 2 million (81%) direct encounters were recorded as physical (face to face) and 0.5 million (19%) as virtual (telephone or technology assisted).

The x axis is the date, starting January 2018 and continuing to January 2026. The y axis is the number of encounters per 1000 registered patients. There are four traces representing different groups: the direct clinicians group has the highest rate of all groups and has remained fairly constant over the timeseries, the indirect clinicians group has the next highest rate and this has steadily increased since 2018. The other two groups are the unmapped direct and indirect groups which have much lower rates however the unmapped direct group shows an increasing trend since 2018.

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Figure 1: Monthly trend in clinical activity (12-month moving mean)

Note: Full definitions are available on the data dashboard.

• January 2026, the rate of direct encounters with general practitioners was 254 per 1,000 registered patients. This rate is 5.6% higher than the previous 3-month average. The average rate of direct encounters with general practitioners for the past 12 months (Feb 25 – Jan 26) was the same as the previous 12-month average (Feb 25 – Jan 26).

Data quality

Not all activity is recorded in the GP clinical systems and data on the complexity or duration of the activity is not currently available. Therefore, the activity reported does not show all the work happening within General Practice. Improvements over time in the recording of information on GP clinical systems may affect trends in activity. 

Several practices have migrated from the EMIS clinical system to the Vision clinical system since the beginning of 2026. This has impacted the data extraction process and the accuracy of the encounters data for these practices. As a result, 8 practices have been excluded from the January 2026 data while the issues are investigated further. These practices are based in multiple health board areas including: Tayside, Glasgow, Dumfries & Galloway and Lanarkshire, and so caution is advised when interpreting trend information.

The GP clinical systems used to record encounters have default entries embedded in them which may not be updated by clinicians to accurately reflect the type of encounter undertaken. This is likely to impact the number of encounters recorded as face to face and therefore inflate the number of encounters shown as "Physical" rather than "Virtual". 

The unmapped direct encounters which cannot be assigned to a specific HCP are being investigated and reviewed by the project team.

Data is still subject to change. Monthly figures and comparisons between them should be used with caution. Differing numbers of working days in each month cause some of the variation in activity figures for measures not described as "adjusted". 

Due to differences in methodology of counting and classifying GP activity, data in this release is not directly comparable to other publications on GP activity in NHS England or NHS Wales.

Further information

Data presented in the visualisation are subject to change.

The next release of this publication will be 7 April 2026.