If you manage to get an NHS appointment these days you probably feel a bit smug. My wife had one yesterday, although any reassurance about the NHS’s health from the existence of the appointment was slightly undermined by it taking place in a Portakabin behind a Screwfix car park.
We shouldn’t be too swift to crow if we get a GP appointment anyway, because it matters who it’s with. So concludes impressive Norwegian research into doctor quality, which, it turns out, varies a lot. In Norway, if you need to change doctor – because they retire, for example – the government allocates you a new one. A bit illiberal, but the randomness is helpful for researchers, allowing them to use different patient outcomes to measure quality.
