Every year patients are asked what they think of the service at their local surgery.
Across the UK more than 703,000 people filled in the NHS England GP Patient Survey this year.
Seventy five per cent of patients ranked their experience as “good” or “very good” – an increase from 73.9 per cent in 2024.
This paper then used this to publish rankings of the best and worst GPs in Wiltshire.
We have received a letter from a GP, saying the following:
Sir,
Having been retired from General Practice (Calne) for over 20 years I have only a blunt axe to grind.
However, you should know that your article on the apparent quality spectrum of Wiltshire General Practices (Gazette & Herald 17 July 2025, pp 1 & 24) must not pass unchallenged.
Every General Practice is unique in many respects and particularly in the factors that affect workload/satisfactory outcomes.
There is enormous variation in the age and social gradation of their patients, in their patients’ ability to communicate effectively, in their patients’ attention to disease prevention, and in their patients’ access to private health care.
All this is then subsumed by the critical differences in the ratio of doctor numbers to patient list size. Some practices have, unavoidably, far more patients per (whole time equivalent) doctor than others.
The latter factor has become more acute in recent decades; practices in socially attractive areas find it possible to recruit replacement staff – their opposite numbers do not.
Whatever the identity of the simpleton who once thought it justifiable to derive a quality measure of any General Practice by presenting (compliant) patients with a clipboard of loaded questions, he or she needs to think again.
And shame on you, local newspaper, for promulgating (prominent front page headline included) such a mistaken, de-motivating and, indeed, dangerous myth.
Yours sincerely,
Dr. Norman Beale MA, MD. Devizes
Editor’s note: Dr Beale makes very valid points and there are certainly questions to be had about the growing inclination to scoring our institutions. It is very important that the bodies keeping us healthy and safe continue to have rigorous, and public, scrutiny – but how they are delivered and all the context involved is also important to include. We are looking to do follow ups with some of the GPs mentioned to give that mentioned context.
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