The issue of whether GPs are offering enough face-to-face appointments as Covid-19 restrictions ease remains hotly debated.The issue of whether GPs are offering enough face-to-face appointments as Covid-19 restrictions ease remains hotly debated.
The issue of whether GPs are offering enough face-to-face appointments as Covid-19 restrictions ease remains hotly debated.

GP patient survey: the hardest doctors’ surgeries to book an appointment in Mansfield and Ashfield in 2021

​​​​​​Patients’ satisfaction with booking a GP appointment is on the rise – despite a public row brewing over whether doctors are seeing enough people face-to-face.

The majority of patients, 71 per cent, had a good experience booking an appointment, according to the latest GP Patient Survey, produced by Ipsos MORI on behalf of NHS England, up from 65 per cent in the 2020 survey.

The issue of whether GPs are offering enough face-to-face appointments as Covid-19 restrictions ease remains hotly debated.

Health Secretary Sajid Javid has now unveiled a £250 million package for GPs in England to improve access to their services – but only if they increase the number of in-person consultations.

GP groups have responded angrily, accusing ministers of failing to grasp the scale of the staffing crisis affecting surgeries.

Dr Richard Vautrey, outgoing chairman of British Medical Association’s GPs committee, said Mr Javid’s criticisms of how GPs work have fuelled a rise in verbal and physical attacks on them and their staff.

The patient survey contacted 2.4 million people from January to April of this year to gather information on how patients feel about their local GP service, and around a third of them responded.

The results reveal the best and worst rated surgeries in Ashfield, Mansfield and beyond.

They also shed light on people’s experiences of booking an appointment locally.

Here we reveal the GP practices out of the 125 in the NHS Nottingham and Nottinghamshire clinical commissioning group area, which were voted the hardest to make an appointment at.

Surgeries are ranked by the proportion of patients who said their experience of booking an appointment was ‘very poor’.

Please note some surgeries had survey response numbers so low that the figures were not published. These surgeries have been omitted.

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