Understanding GP data and registration

Access and practice size

Registered patients, workforce, appointments, online consultations and telephony describe different parts of demand and recorded activity. A larger number of appointments can reflect a larger population; it is not a count of spare slots.

Use matching dates and denominators on the practice profile. Whole-time equivalent staff and headcounts are different measures.

Patient experience and peer context

GP Patient Survey results reflect respondents and their experiences during the source period. Read the sample and any suppression notes before comparing.

Our peer summaries use the same measure, period and reporting cohort, with a minimum of five practices. Medians describe the cohort; they are not a clinical recommendation.

QOF and prescribing context

QOF registers and intervention measures describe recorded populations and defined eligibility. Recorded prevalence is affected by the registered population and recording, and does not establish the risk for a person living nearby.

OpenPrescribing provides separate official-publisher dashboards for prescribing patterns. These require clinical and population context and cannot determine which medicine a person needs.

OpenPrescribing.net, Bennett Institute for Applied Data Science, University of Oxford. Its prescribing indicators are linked here; they have not been imported into our comparison tables.

Catchments and registering

A practice’s address and distance from you do not establish whether it accepts your registration. Check the surgery’s area and current registration arrangements using its own website or the NHS service finder.

Some surgeries accept people outside their area. Ask how home visits, urgent care and community services would work before choosing that arrangement.

We do not publish unverified practice boundaries or infer eligibility from a postcode radius.