GP practices could be named and shamed as new league tables are set to show the surgeries offering the least number of appointments.
Data will be published on Thursday (November 24) setting out how many appointments each practice in England is delivering and the length of time it takes to be seen. The Government said the statistics, which will be published on the NHS Digital website, would help patients make “more informed choices” about the practice they choose.
It will help “improve transparency about performance”, officials said. But leading GPs raised concerns about the data being used to compare practices against each other without accounting for different patient characteristics – for instance, a seaside town with an elderly population may have surgeries which offer fewer appointments than city centre practices catering for a younger population.
