GP Surgery Website: Plain-English Pages and Wording With AI

A GP surgery website needs a short list of pages that answer patients' practical questions: opening hours, how to get urgent help, how to book or ask for something online, repeat prescriptions, registration, contact details, policies, complaints and privacy. AI can draft each page in plain English from your facts, while clinical advice stays out and a person approves every page.

Most patients arrive at a surgery website with one question and a short fuse: "Are you open?", "How do I order my tablets?", "How do I see someone today?" National health sites and website builders show what pages look like, but few tell you what your own site should answer first. The order matters more than the design: list the pages patients need, write the facts for each yourself, let AI turn those facts into plain wording, and keep it well away from anything clinical.

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Start from the calls you want to stop

The best structure comes from the phone log, not a template. Ask reception to tally, for two weeks, why patients ring. Group the reasons: opening times, repeat prescriptions, test results, booking, sick notes, registration, referrals, forms, complaints. The top five reasons are the first five pages or sections a patient should reach from the home page in one tap. If 25 per cent of calls are about repeat prescriptions, a prescription page that answers well is the cheapest "receptionist" you can hire.

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A small example: a made-up practice tallies 400 calls over two weeks. Prescriptions take 88, appointment booking 120, results 52, opening times 30, forms 24, other 86. After rewriting the prescription and results pages and adding a visible urgent-help box, the practice might expect some of those calls to disappear, though by how much is for you to measure rather than assume. Re-tally after eight weeks and compare.

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The pages a surgery site needs

Here is a practical page list. Treat it as a checklist to compare with your contract and your regulator's current requirements, because some items may be mandatory in your setting and others optional.

Many sites also add pages for services such as blood tests, vaccinations, minor procedures, long-term condition reviews and carers support. Each should say what the service is, who it is for, how to book and what to bring, without turning into medical content. Where patients need clinical information, link to a trusted national source and say that you have chosen it.

What AI can write and what it must not

Draw this line in writing before you start, and keep it with the project.

• AI may draft: navigation labels, page headings, step-by-step instructions, opening hours wording, closure notices, form instructions, FAQ answers about how the practice works, accessibility statements for a person to check, easy-read versions of approved text.
• AI may not decide or write: what to do for a symptom, how to take a medicine, whether to attend, who is eligible for a service, anything that sounds like a diagnosis or a triage rule.
• A person must approve: every page before publication, with the clinical lead signing off anything that touches care, and the manager checking every fact such as times, numbers and deadlines.

The reason is simple. A language model writes smooth, confident text whether or not it is true, and a patient on a website cannot tell the difference. When the content is "how to order a repeat prescription at this surgery", you supply the facts and the model supplies the plain language. When the content is "what to do if you have chest pain", it does not belong on your site in your own words at all.

From your facts to a patient-friendly page

The reliable method is a fact sheet first, wording second. For each page, write down the facts in rough bullets, then ask AI to turn them into plain English with strict rules. This is a prompt you can reuse:

You are writing a page for a GP surgery website. Write in plain English at a reading age of about 10.
Short sentences. One idea per paragraph. Use "you" and "we". No jargon; if a term is needed, explain it once.
Use headings that are questions patients ask. Put the most important step first.

Use ONLY the facts below. Do not add facts, times, phone numbers, or advice. If something seems missing,
list it at the end under "Questions for the practice manager".
Do not give any medical advice or say what a patient should do about symptoms.

Page: How to order a repeat prescription
Facts:
[bullet list of your facts]

Here is a made-up fact sheet and the kind of result you would get. Facts: online ordering through the practice's app or website; or drop a slip at reception; or by post with a stamped envelope; not by phone except for people who cannot use other routes; allow two working days; collect from reception or the chosen pharmacy; urgent requests ring after 10am. The result, lightly trimmed:

How do I order a repeat prescription?

You can order in three ways:
1. Online, using our website or app. This is the fastest way.
2. In person, by handing a slip to reception.
3. By post, with a stamped envelope for us to send it back.

We cannot take orders by phone. If you cannot use any of these ways, please call us and we will help.

How long will it take?
Please allow two working days.

How do I collect it?
You can collect it from reception, or we can send it to your chosen pharmacy.

What if I need it urgently?
Please ring us after 10am and tell the receptionist.

Questions for the practice manager: What are the reception opening hours for collection? Is the app free? Which pharmacies can you send to?

As the manager, you would fix three things. The closing questions are good: answer them and add the facts. "We cannot take orders by phone" may be tonal, so soften to "We do not take orders by phone, because it is not safe to take them down by ear" only if that really is your reason. Third, add anything the patient needs but you had not written down, such as what to do when the medicine is about to run out on a weekend. The tool exposed the gaps, which is half the value.

Opening hours, closures and the page that is always wrong

Opening hours pages go stale faster than any other. Three habits help. Keep the hours in one place and have every other mention link to it, rather than repeating them in six paragraphs. Add a short "closures" block at the top for the next 30 days with dates, and remove entries as they pass. And give a named person the monthly job of checking the page against the real rota.

AI can help with wording a closure notice that tells people what to do. A sample prompt: "Write a banner notice, under 40 words, saying the surgery is closed on [date] and where patients should go for urgent help. Use only these facts: [facts]." Compare the output to your facts and check that the urgent-help route is accurate, because this is the line patients will rely on.

Be careful with phrases like "open 8am to 6.30pm" that hide the fact that the phone lines differ from the doors, or that some services run only on certain days. A table by day with separate rows for doors, phones and online requests removes the guesswork.

Online requests without false promises

If the site has an online request form, the page explaining it must set expectations honestly. Say what it is for (non-urgent questions, admin requests, a request to be contacted), what it is not for (anything urgent), when it is read and by whom, and how soon patients should expect a reply. Do not copy a response time from another practice. Use the figure you actually achieve, checked against last month's data.

The form itself needs sensible fields: name, date of birth, contact method, the request in the patient's own words, and a clear warning about urgent problems placed above the submit button, not buried in a footer. Free-text answers can contain sensitive information, so check that the form tool and its storage are suitable for health information before going live. If a chatbot is part of the plan, run it through the checks in a small clinic's data and consent checklist for AI chatbots first.

Accessibility and readability checks

A surgery site serves every age and ability, so accessibility is not an extra. The usual yardstick is the W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG); version 2.2 is the current one, and the W3C encourages using the latest version. Ask your website supplier which version and level (A, AA or AAA) they build to and whether any rules that apply to your contract name one. Cover these points at launch and each time pages change.

• Text: plain sentences, readable size, strong contrast between text and background, no information carried only by colour.
• Structure: one clear page title, headings in order, real lists, descriptive link text such as "order a repeat prescription" rather than a bare word like "more".
• Images and files: alternative text for any image that carries meaning, and accessible versions of any PDF; better still, put the content on the page.
• Navigation: everything reachable by keyboard, a consistent menu, a visible search where possible.
• Phones: most visitors will be on a mobile, so test every page on one with large text turned on.
• Language and alternatives: offer an easy-read version of the key pages and say how patients can ask for another format or language.

AI can check drafts for reading age and suggest simpler words, and it can write first-draft alt text for images. It cannot test the live site with a screen reader; a person has to do that, ideally someone who uses one. Ask a patient group member to try the five most common tasks on a phone and watch where they stall.

A before and after: the contact page

Before, a contact page that lists a long paragraph: "The surgery telephone lines are open Monday to Friday from 8.00 until 18.30 excluding public holidays when the practice is closed; for urgent medical matters outside these hours please contact the appropriate out-of-hours service; for prescription queries please telephone between 10.00 and 12.00..." The patient has to hunt for the number and the urgent route.

After, drawn from the same facts: a boxed line at the top reading "In an emergency, call the emergency number. For urgent advice when we are closed, call [out-of-hours number]." Under it a table with days, door hours and phone hours, then the main phone number, the address with access notes, and a short list: "Prescriptions: use the online service. Results: ring after 2pm. Forms: ask at reception." The content is identical, but the patient finds the number in one second. AI can restructure text like this well, provided your facts stay fixed and you compare the output line by line.

A second page worked through: registering as a new patient

The registration page shows how much a fact sheet improves a page. Take a made-up surgery. The facts: new patients register through a form on the website or on paper at reception; the form takes about 10 minutes; the surgery needs the patient's name, date of birth, address, previous surgery if known and contact details; no proof of address is needed to register, though it helps (this is the practice's own rule in the example, so substitute yours); the surgery accepts new patients within its boundary; and a new patient health questionnaire follows within a week of registering.

Feed those to the prompt above and you get a page headed "How do I register?" with four steps and a short list of what to have to hand. Two things then need a human. First, the boundary: the AI wrote "if you live in our area", which is vague. You replace it with a plain description and a link to a map or an address checker if you have one. Second, the AI wrote "you will be registered within a week" because the facts mentioned a week for the questionnaire. Delete that, because registration speed is not what the fact sheet said. This is a typical slip: the tool merges two facts into a promise.

The page should end with what happens next: how the patient will hear that registration is complete, when they can book, and what to do if they have an urgent problem before then. The last is the line patients most need and most often find missing.

Writing the results page without interpreting anything

The results page is the easiest one to get wrong, because the temptation is to reassure. Stay with logistics. Say when results are usually ready for the common test types, how the surgery will contact the patient, whether the patient should ring or wait to be contacted, what time of day the phone line for results is least busy, and what the patient should do if their symptoms get worse while waiting (use the urgent help route). Never write "no news is good news" or any line that implies what a missing call means, because it may not be true for every test.

AI will happily add reassuring sentences if you let it. The prompt line "do not add reassurance, interpretation or advice" and a line-by-line review keep them out. A sample before and after: a draft reading "Don't worry if you haven't heard, most results are normal" becomes "Please ring after 2pm on the working day shown on your test form. If you feel worse while you wait, use the urgent help route on this page."

Using the same words everywhere

Inconsistent names make a site hard to use. If one page says "repeat prescription", another says "medication request" and a third "script", patients wonder whether they are different things. Build a short glossary of approved terms, with the patient-facing name for each service, and ask AI to check every page against it. A useful prompt: "Here is my glossary and here is a page. List every place where the page uses a different word for something in the glossary." The same glossary guides signage, text messages and what reception says on the phone, which cuts confusion in every channel.

Agree what you call the people too: "doctors", "GPs", "clinicians", "nurses", "practitioners". Pick patient-friendly words, explain roles once in the team page and then stay consistent. When a new type of role arrives, such as a pharmacist or paramedic working at the surgery, add it to the glossary and to the team page on the same day.

Testing with patients before you publish

Five patients and a list of tasks reveal more than any checklist. Ask your patient group, or a handful of willing patients of mixed ages, to try tasks on their own phone while you watch: find today's opening time, order a repeat prescription, find how to ask about a test result, find how to register a family member, find what to do on a public holiday. Do not help. Note where they hesitate, which words they read aloud with a frown, and where they give up and reach for the phone.

Each stall becomes a change: a clearer heading, a moved link, a shorter paragraph. AI can then rewrite the section, and you test again. Two rounds usually remove most of the friction.

A realistic mistake, and how it would show

Picture a practice that publishes a results page saying "ring after 2pm". The time comes from the manager's memory, and the phone line is actually staffed for results only after 3pm. For weeks patients ring in the wrong hour, get through to a busy desk and are told to ring back. Reception spots the pattern only when the same complaint keeps coming up in calls. The fix was a one-line edit, but the lesson is the process one: every time, date and number on the site needs a named source, and the page owner checks it against that source. A fact sheet with a "source" column makes that natural.

Keeping the pages true after launch

The pages are only as good as the process that keeps them current. Give each page an owner and a review date in a simple sheet: page, owner, last checked, next check, source of facts. Reception owns hours and prescriptions, the clinical lead owns anything near care, the manager owns policies. A monthly ten-minute walk through the site on a phone, following the main routes as a patient would, finds most errors. Ask AI to help only with tasks such as drafting a changelog entry or tidying wording after a rule changes.

Keep a record of what changed and why. When a patient complains that the site said something that was not true, that log is the quickest way to find out when the change happened and who approved it.

Measuring whether the site is doing its job

Three measures are enough. First, the phone tally: re-run the two-week call count every quarter and see whether the reasons you addressed have fallen. Second, the top pages in your site statistics: if "contact us" tops the list, the home page is not answering the questions. Third, patient comments in the feedback box, tagged by page. Together they tell you what to rewrite next, and they stop the website becoming a place where policies go to be forgotten.

The missed-appointment policy is a good first page to improve with AI help, and drafting a GP practice DNA policy, letters and reminder texts shows how. For the phone side, the 8am rush and hand-offs covers what happens when patients do ring. And for general website copy outside healthcare, see writing your website copy with AI. The AI hub collects the rest.

Questions practice managers ask about their surgery website

What pages must a GP surgery website have?

At minimum: how to contact the surgery and get urgent help, opening hours, how to book or request an appointment, repeat prescriptions, how to register, practice policies, complaints, and the privacy notice. Your contract and regulator may require more, so check their current requirements and treat this list as a starting point, not a legal checklist.

Can AI write clinical advice for the site?

It should not. Keep clinical information to links to a trusted national source, and write only practical, operational wording yourself. AI can sound authoritative while being wrong or out of date, and a patient who acts on it carries the risk. Have a clinician approve any page that goes near symptoms or treatment.

How plain should the wording be?

Aim for a reading age of about 9 to 11: short sentences, everyday words, one action per paragraph. Test by reading aloud, and run drafts through a readability checker. Avoid abbreviations unless you explain them once, and use the same name for each service everywhere on the site.

How often should the pages be checked?

Review opening hours, closures and contact numbers monthly, and the whole site at least twice a year. Add a named owner and a date to each page's internal record. Out-of-date opening hours are a quick way to create avoidable phone calls, because patients ring to check.

Further reads

• GP Surgery Phone System: Cloud Telephony With AI Call Handling — A phone system that backs up the website.
• How a Small Clinic Can Use AI at the Front Desk Safely — Using AI safely at a clinic's front desk.
• How to Write an AI Disclosure Statement for Your Website — Telling visitors how AI is used on your site.
• Best AI Chatbots for Small Business Websites — Chatbot options, if you decide to add one.
• Telling Patients You Use AI Note-Taking: Consent Wording That Works — Wording for telling patients about AI in care.
• Explaining Dental Treatment Plans to Patients With AI — Explaining care plans in plain language.
• AI Marketing for Medical Practices Without Making Health Claims — Service pages, review replies, referrer updates and local search for a medical practice, drafted with AI and kept free of health claims.
• AI Tools and AI Development: The Complete 2026 Guide — the AI hub, including every tutorial in the AI-for-business series.

Sources: W3C WCAG overview page (read November 2026), plain-English writing practice and common patient-facing website structures; the surgery's own contract and regulator requirements must be read directly.