How to choose a GP practice

In England you choose which GP practice you register with, and registering is free. Where you live and whether a practice is taking new patients decide which practices you can join. Among those, what patients say about each one can help you choose.

Your right to choose

The NHS Choice Framework says you can choose which GP practice you register with, and ask to see a particular doctor, nurse or other healthcare professional there. A practice must accept you unless it has reasonable grounds not to. The framework lists them:

• it is not taking on new patients because it is at maximum capacity
• it is not accepting patients who live outside its practice boundary
• because of your circumstances, for reasons of safety or clinical need, registering with a practice outside the area where you live might not be appropriate

If a practice cannot register you, it must tell you why.

Start with where you live

Each practice has a catchment area (the NHS also calls it the practice area or boundary). The NHS website says most people will need to register near where they live, but some practices accept patients from further away. To see which practices cover your address, search by postcode on the NHS service Find a GP, or check the practice’s own website, or ask the practice.

You can also register with a practice outside your local area, for example near where you work, if it accepts out-of-area patients. Find a GP has a filter for practices that do. The NHS website points out that this may affect the services you can get, including home visits and urgent care from your GP (out-of-hours care included) and community services such as physiotherapy and midwife appointments. Ask the practice what happens for these before you register. The guide to changing practice has more on this.

What patients say about a practice

Every year the GP Patient Survey asks a random sample of each practice’s patients about their experience. This site rates 6,090 practices on the share of patients who describe their practice as good, the measure NHS England uses, together with the share of appointments that take place within two weeks of booking, from NHS appointment data. It shows twelve more of the survey’s questions on every practice page, from getting through on the phone to seeing the same GP. Search by postcode on the home page or open your area to see every practice near you.

When you compare practices, three things help:

• Read the interval, not only the score. Each Practice score comes with a 95% interval, the range the true figure is likely to lie in. When two practices’ intervals overlap a lot, the figures cannot really tell them apart.
• Look at the number of answers. A score based on 40 answers is less certain than one based on 200, and its interval is wider.
• Use the labels. “Clearly above the England average” means the whole interval lies above England. “Cannot be told apart from the England average” means the survey cannot show a difference either way. How the rating works explains both.

The rating is about patients’ experience and how soon appointments take place, not clinical quality. The survey’s own FAQ notes that practices serve different populations and have different levels of resource, so their results should be read in context. Each practice page also shows the Care Quality Commission’s rating, which comes from inspections and is a separate fact, not part of our rating.

What only the practice can tell you

Some things are not in any survey. A practice’s website or reception can tell you:

• how you book. The NHS website lists the NHS App or NHS website, a form on the practice’s website, phone and reception, and notes that a practice may only make some appointments available online
• which professionals you might see. Practices can offer appointments with a GP, nurse, clinical pharmacist or physiotherapist, face to face, by phone or online
• how evening and Saturday appointments work. They can be at your practice, at another local practice or at another local NHS service
• whether it is taking new patients now, and whether your address is inside its area

If seeing the same professional matters to you, read Seeing the same GP. It explains your right to ask and how often patients get to.

When you have chosen

You can register online, through the NHS App if you are already registered somewhere, or on a paper form. The guide to changing your GP practice goes through each step.