Patients needing a non-urgent doctor appointment in England will have one within two weeks under new plans to improve the service.
And people will be able to compare how their local GP practices are performing over access and waiting periods.
But already leading GPs have blasted the plans, to be outlined by Health and Social Care Secretary Therese Coffey, saying they will have "minimal impact" on patient care.
And publishing "league tables" of surgeries will not "improve access or standards of care", the Royal College of GPs said.
Ms Coffey will also say that more GP assistants and advance nurse practitioners are to be employed to free up valuable GP time.
In her new "Plan for Patients", Ms Coffey will try to help ease the 8am scramble for appointments as the NHS rolls out new telephone systems.
The systems, already used by some surgeries, will mean that patients are not automatically cut off if there is no-one available to take their call.
Patients will be told their place in the queue and maybe asked a few simple questions or offered information about practice opening times while waiting.
Also, she will outline plans to publish data so patients can assess how their GP practice is performing compared to other local surgeries with regards to the number of appointments delivered and how long people need to wait for care.
Patients with non-urgent needs will not have to wait longer than a fortnight to be seen, she will say.
NHS Digital figures show that 15% - 3.9 million - of the 25.9 million GP appointments made in England in August occurred at least two weeks after the appointment was made.
Patients who have urgent needs will still be offered same-day access.
The Government is to "free up funding" for practices to employ more roles, including GP assistants and more advanced nurse practitioners, but officials have not outlined how much money will be made available. They have estimated 1.2 million appointments each year can be handled by other surgery staff.
Pharmacists will be given new responsibilities to manage and supply more prescriptions such as contraception and this could free up a further two million appointments every year, it is claimed.
Pharmacists could also take referrals from emergency care for minor illnesses or symptoms, such as a cough, headache or sore throat, the Department of Health and Social Care said.
Ms Coffey will outline the plan, which has not yet been published, in the House of Commons on Thursday where she is expected to set out more detail on addressing the record backlog of care and ambulance service problems.
"I will put a laser-like focus on the needs of patients, making their priorities my priorities and being a champion for them on the issues that affect them most," she is expected to say.
"Our Plan for Patients will make it easier to get a general practice appointment and we will work tirelessly to deliver that, alongside supporting our hardworking GP teams.
"We know this winter will be tough and this is just the first step in our work to bolster our valued NHS and social care services so people can get the care they need."
Commenting on the plans, Professor Martin Marshall, chair of the Royal College of GPs, said: "It's a shame that the Health Secretary didn't talk to the College and to our members on the front line before making her announcement because we could have informed her of what is really needed to ensure a GP service that meets the needs of patients and is fit for the future.
"Lumbering a struggling service with more expectations, without a plan as to how to deliver them, will only serve to add to the intense workload and workforce pressures GPs and our teams are facing, whilst having minimal impact on the care our patients receive.
"Whilst we support transparency we strongly caution against creation of 'league tables', which we know from international research evidence do not work in improving access to or standards of care."
Helen Buckingham, director of strategy at the Nuffield Trust think tank, added: "The truth is that we are chronically short of GPs, with the number of GPs per person in England falling year after year.
"Targets don't create any more doctors."
Meanwhile Azeem Majeed, professor of primary care and public health at Imperial College London, said that the NHS could be facing a very tough winter.
Asked at a briefing on winter pressures how bad it would be on a scale of one to 10, he said: "My answer would be 10.
"The NHS is already under a lot of pressure.
"So it's quite likely this winter will be even worse than it is now through to January or February, so I think it could be a very bad winter for the NHS this year."
