RATE YOUR GP SITE STAGGERS ONWARD

From Pulse The GPC has dropped its opposition to controversial plans for patients to anonymously rate GP practices on the NHS Choices website, and is now actively working with the site to develop the proposals, Pulse can reveal.

Negotiators have been persuaded in a series of high-level meetings that the site will offer sufficient safeguards to protect GPs from malicious attack, including a key proposal for practices to have instant right of reply.

The GPC had expressed grave doubts over the scheme, which will allow patients to leave comments or score practices in areas such as access and courtesy, warning it could be ‘misleading’ for the public.

Its change of tack clears the way for the rating system to be rolled out to practices across the country from early autumn.

The GPC has now agreed to help draw up the questions patients will be asked and the rules for comment moderation.

LMCs are to help NHS Choices build up a database of named practice contacts ahead of the launch in September or early October, to identify who will receive alerts when patients leave comments.

Under the safeguards agreed by NHS Choices, practices will have the right to reply to all comments, all of which will be pre-moderated. Malicious or campaigning comments, or ones identifying individual staff, will not be allowed.

However, plans to allow patients to sort practices by their ratings – effectively creating league tables – remain. Patients will also be able to leave anonymous comments and say whether they would recommend the practice to a friend.

Ministers hope the ‘TripAdvisor-style’ ratings will make it easier for patients to choose a practice and force GPs to be more responsive to feedback.

Sorry, but this is still a bad idea, the majority of patients know their GP and the GP practice, there is no need to “rate” them, it is bad for patients and bad for GPs, if you don’t like your GP change to another, if you like them write them a thank you letter.

The NHS knobs are obsessed with ratings, and targets, a rating system for GPs will only muddy the waters, and provide jobs for more management layers that the NHS and we do not need.

It should be scrapped, and the money used, because it will cost money, put to use for patients not stats.

“Torture numbers and they'll confess to anything.” Gregg Easterbrook

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