Want to know how bad your local GP surgery is in the midst of England’s never-ending appointments crisis?
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MailOnline has crunched all the NHS data into an engaging interactive tool so you can see everything you need to know in one go. App readers can access it by clicking here.
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This enables you to search for any practice in the country and find out what percentage of appointments are kept face-to-face, how many patients are seen on the same day and how satisfied they are with their GP – as well as and many more.
The data examined is from November, the latest fully comparable figures available.
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During that month, national statistics showed that the number of face-to-face consultations fell back 69 percent.
The Bath Road surgery in Hounslow had the lowest percentage of face-to-face appointments in November at 15.3 per cent. MailOnline did not include GP surgeries in its analysis, with more than 20 per cent of appointments being held by an ‘unknown’ method or providing only remote consultations
Droylsden Road family practice in Manchester was one of the lowest rated GP surgeries in the country, according to a patient survey, with only 28 per cent rating it ‘good’.
This was slightly lower than the figure for October (71.3 per cent), which marked the highest proportion since the start of Covid.
Despite the upward trend in 2022, the proportion of face-to-face consultations is still below the pre-Covid level of 80 per cent.
According to NHS figures, the Bath Road surgery in Hounslow had the lowest percentage of face-to-face appointments in November at 15.3 per cent.
MailOnline did not include surgeries conducting more than 20 per cent of appointments by an ‘unknown’ method, or surgeries providing only remote consultations, in its analysis.
But in an annual survey, Droylsden Road Family Practice in Manchester found its patients to be among the most dissatisfied in the country.
Only 28 per cent of patients surveyed in a national NHS poll rated GP surgeries as ‘good’.
Top GPs have said the current balance of in-person and remote appointments is about right and patients should not get face-to-face appointments if there is no clinical need.
But campaign groups disagree, saying alert telephone or online calls are not suitable for everyone and are not always the best way of diagnosing patients.
Britons are also suffering from the ‘8am scramble’ to get a GP appointment as people worried about health problems flood practice telephone lines trying to contact their family doctor.
This map shows the 50 GP practices with the lowest proportion of face-to-face appointments according to official NHS data. MailOnline’s analysis excluded practices if the mode of appointment was unknown for more than 20 per cent of their consultations and if the GP service did not offer regular face-to-face appointments, such as care home services. NHS Digital describes this data as ‘experimental’ which means it may not capture the full picture and is more prone to reporting errors
The proportion of GP appointments fell to 69 per cent in November after months of steady improvement since last February. This figure, while higher than pandemic lows, is still a far cry from the nearly 80 per cent appointments that were held pre-Covid.
The latest NHS data on GP appointments for November showed the majority were not accompanied by a family doctor, instead being picked up by another staff member such as a nurse or paramedic
Despite several health secretaries promising change, campaigners and patient advocates are concerned that not enough is being done to fix the crisis.
Some have also said it appears ‘some practices don’t want to see patients’ and are concerned remote consultations are becoming the norm for some UK GPs, who earn an average of £110,000 a year.
Why Britons are struggling to get a GP appointment is complex.
This has been partly due to the closure of hundreds of surgeries over the past decade, forcing millions of patients to switch to a different doctor.
NHS figures show fewer than 6,500 practices were open in England this year – down from 8,100 in 2013.
Practice closures put even more pressure on family doctors as patients barging their doors join ‘soulless’ mega-practices.
Several GP bodies now warn that family doctors are responsible for too many patients, with some parts of the country now having more than 1,000 patients per doctor.
Official figures show that the average salary of a GP has risen by £10,000 to almost £112,000 in the latest reporting period.
There were only 27,558 full-time equivalent, fully qualified GPs working in England last month, down 1.6 per cent from the 18,000 recorded in June 2021. This was down 5.3 per cent on the more than 29,000 employed GPs in June 2017.
Experts have said this is both unsafe for patients – who are largely referred through appointments by doctors with a massive workload – and also contributes to burnout among GPs.
Faced with increased demand, paperwork and complaints of aggressive media coverage, many family doctors are choosing to retire in their 50s, go abroad or go to work in the private sector.
Also, as the population has grown, the patient list size has increased proportionately.
MailOnline’s data is compiled from a number of different NHS sources.
Not all GP practices have submitted data to all these different sources, which means that some aspects of their service are unrecognized.
Additionally, the data for face-to-face appointments has been classified as experimental by NHS Digital, the health service’s statistics body, which means it may contain errors that…
Justin