A Surrey GP practice cut waits for routine appointments from 13 days to 4 on average after adding AI triage, an evaluation found

SURREY, England, November 2024 — An evaluation of an AI triage system at one Surrey GP practice has been published. Here's what it found, what it cost, and what went wrong.

Cost and outcome (as of Nov. 14, 2024)

Waits for pre-bookable appointments: 13 days on average before, 4 days after (median 11 days to 3). (Unity Insights evaluation)
Automation: 91% of appointments were booked without staff or clinician involvement. (Health Innovation KSS)
Phones: 47% fewer calls at peak hours and 58% fewer maximum concurrent calls. Monthly calls averaged 12,828 in winter 2022–23 and 9,338 in winter 2023–24. (Health Innovation KSS; evaluation)
Cost of the system to the practice: not disclosed.

What the practice did

The Groves Medical Centre began using Rapid Health's Smart Triage on Oct. 30, 2023. Patients describe their problem online, by phone or in person. The system asks follow-up questions, assigns a clinical priority and lets the patient book a slot directly. Unity Insights compared four months before go-live (June 29 to Oct. 29, 2023) with the four months after (Oct. 30, 2023 to Feb. 29, 2024).

The practice's starting point was weak. The evaluation notes a Care Quality Commission rating of "inadequate" from a 2023 review, and a GP Patient Survey in which 71% of patients said it was "not easy" to get through by phone.

What changed, per the evaluation

The share of patients triaged to on-the-day appointments fell from over 62% to 19%, which freed slots that could be booked ahead. GP appointments moved from 10 to 15 minutes. The release says 70% fewer patients needed a repeat appointment. It says online requests rose from 12% to 82%; the evaluation says phone requests fell from 88% to 18%. Patients were offered an average of 61 slots to choose from. The evaluation recorded no clinical incidents or significant events after go-live.

"Rapid health has changed the way we work by optimising our resources and increasing patient access," said Dr Andrea Fensom, a GP partner at the practice, in the release.

What the backers said

The release quotes the network and the vendor. "I'm really pleased to see the impact that Smart Triage has had on helping patients get better access to their GP practice," said Jenny Partridge, innovation manager at Health Innovation KSS. Carmelo Insalaco, Rapid Health's chief executive, said: "We're really proud to see the extraordinary impact of autonomous patient triage at The Groves Medical Centre." He said the company looks forward to "further collaboration and expansion across the wider NHS."

The evaluation also reports that 85% of appointments booked through Smart Triage were face-to-face, a 60% increase over comparable slots before go-live. The release says the system avoided over-triage to hospital care but gives no figure for it. Neither document says how much staff time the system saved.

What went wrong

Same-day care got slower. The time from request to an on-the-day appointment rose from a mean of 3.0 hours to 4.6 hours (median 2.0 to 4.9), the evaluation found.
Mean and median mixed up. The executive summary calls "13 days to 4 days" a median. The report's body says those are averages and the medians are 11 and 3.
Thin feedback. The post-launch survey drew 20 responses from the 5,225 patients who booked through the system. Of staff, 30% said they were satisfied with the system.
Short window, one practice. The data covers four winter months. On one measure, missed appointments, the authors say the result "shows correlation not causality."
Not fully independent. The release calls the evaluation independent, but Rapid Health co-commissioned it.
What we don't know yet: what the practice pays, and whether the gains held after February 2024.

Our follow-up question for The Groves Medical Centre

Have waits for routine and same-day appointments held since February 2024, and what does Smart Triage cost the practice each year?

Later developments (added Oct. 2026)

On March 10, 2025, Health Innovation KSS published a case study on The Groves that repeats the evaluation's findings and says Rapid Health plans to expand. (Health Innovation KSS)
On April 15, 2026, the NHS Innovation Accelerator said Smart Triage was integrated with the NHS App for more than one million patients, and that the feature would be rolled out to all Rapid Health practices "throughout early 2026." It cited the Surrey evaluation as "11 days to just 3 days on average." The evaluation calls those figures medians. (NHS Innovation Accelerator)
We found no published follow-up data on The Groves since the evaluation period.

Sources

Health Innovation Kent Surrey Sussex, “Evaluation Shows AI Triage System at Surrey GP Practice achieves 73% reduction in waiting times and improves patient care and practice efficiency,” Nov. 14, 2024. healthinnovation-kss.com
Unity Insights, evaluation of Rapid Health's Smart Triage at The Groves Medical Centre, November 2024. healthinnovation-kss.com
Health Innovation Kent Surrey Sussex, “Transforming primary care access and efficiency through Smart Triage: a case study,” March 10, 2025. healthinnovation-kss.com
NHS Innovation Accelerator, “24/7 GP appointment booking is now live in the NHS App for more than one million patients,” April 15, 2026. nhsaccelerator.com

Disclosure: [not in copy] Editor placeholder