REVEALED: GP practices in Northamptonshire where patients look likely to face longest waits for appointments

GP practices where patients in Northamptonshire are most likely to wait longer than two weeks for an appointment have been revealed in new figures.

The Government said the data published by NHS Digital – which gives detailed information on appointments and waiting times for individual GP practices across England – will help patients “make a more informed choice about the practice they choose to visit”. But the move has not been welcomed by everyone, with the Royal College of GPs (RCGP) criticising the lack of context around how different practices operate.

A total of 431,851 appointments took place at GP practices in the former NHS Northamptonshire CCG area in October. At least 83,398 — 19 percent — of these had taken place more than a fortnight after being booked while 27,049, six percent of the total, saw patients wait longer than 28 days. The Nothamptonshre practices with the highest proportion of appointments occurring after a fortnight were:

■ Wootton Medical Centre – 43.5 percent of 4,116 appointments took place more than two weeks after they had been booked in October

■ Brackley Medical Centre – 37.8 percent of 9,598 appointments

■ Denton Village Surgery – 37.6 percent of 5,389 appointments

■ Weavers Medical – 37.5 percent of 11,211 appointments

■ Summerlee Medical Centre – 37.2 percent of 678 appointments

■ Harborough Field Surgery – 35.2 percent of 7,421 appointments

■ Spinney Brook Medical Centre – 33.3 percent of 5,504 appointments

■ Parklands Medical Centre – 32.9 percent of 6,910 appointments

■ Greens Norton & Weedon Medical Practice – 32.8 percent of 9,745 appointments

■ Byfield Medical Centre – 31.8 percent of 5,282 appointments

At the other end of the scale:

■ Higham Ferrers Surgery – just 1.4 percent of 1,918 appointments saw patients wait longer than a fortnight in October

■ Danes Camp Medical Centre – 3.6 percent of 4,253 appointments

■ Marshalls Road Surgery – 3.6 percent of 1,044 appointments

■ Rillwood Medical Centre – 4.1 percent of 1,512 appointments

■ Dr Abbas – 6.2 percent of 4,538 appointments

■ Maple Access Partnership – 7.7 percent of 8,472 appointments

■ Nene Valley Surgery – 8 percent of 3,730 appointments

■ Lakeside Healthcare – 8.3 percent of 23,813 appointments

■ Brook Medical Centre – 8.6 percent of 1,812 appointments

■ County Surgery – 9.2 percent of 2,192 appointments

This newspaper offered Wootton Medical Centre the opportunity to comment about the data but did not receive a response. NHS Digital cautioned that GP workloads can be affected by several factors such as the demographic of patients registered at the practice, how deprived the area is and the number of care homes the practice offers services to.

The new practice-level figures come as part of the Government's “plan for patients”, which includes a new ambition for every patient to get an appointment at their GP practice within two weeks. However, the RCGP said the Government should address the root cause of GP pressures including recruitment and retention of doctors instead of “lumbering a struggling service with new expectations.”

Chair, Professor Kamila Hawthorne, said: "A record 36.1 million consultations were delivered in October, almost 40 percent of these on the day they were booked and more than 71 percent delivered in-person, the highest proportion since before the pandemic."

Prof Hawthorne said GP workloads have escalated while the number of fully qualified full-time equivalent GPs has fallen by 719 across England since 2019. She added: “GP teams are just as frustrated as patients when they don’t have the resources and time to deliver the high standard of care to patients they want to, and in some areas where the pressures are even greater, this is happening more.”

The Government has set out plans to overhaul NHS pension rules in an attempt to retain more senior doctors and remove barriers to retired clinicians returning to work – including new “flexibilities” to increase working hours without affecting pension payments.

Health Secretary Steve Barclay said the changes would “open up extra appointments so patients can see their GP and consultants more quickly”.