Dr Tim Dalton, Local GP and Joint Chair of the Healthier Wigan Partnership

Having spent the last six months celebrating the various ways that GP practices across the Borough have been working to improve the health of communities, it feels appropriate to talk about the recently released Patient Survey results for GP Practices.

The annual survey asks over 2 million patients from across the country, with people taking part at every practice to rate their experiences of the care they get from their GP practice.

Across Wigan Borough, I’m delighted that overall, our results show a positive picture with the Borough showing higher levels of satisfaction than the national average with 80% of people on average being satisfied with their practice compared with 75% nationally. 41 of the practices out of 55 in the Borough beat the national average with 76% satisfaction or more.

Particular congratulations go to the practice teams at Grange Practice and the Premier Health who had the highest levels of satisfactions overall at 94% respectively, and to the teams at Astley General Practice and South Wigan Medical Centre who achieved over 90%.

These are fantastic results for these practices and the Borough overall, showing that mostly people are happy with the care they are getting from their GP practices. However, the various league tables being published in different papers across the Borough and Greater Manchester have made me reflect (once more) how often we doctors are rated, berated and pitted against one another.

I don’t want you to think for one second that I don’t think it is important to understand how patients feel about the service we offer. The patient voice is vital and helps to understand where the people who need us think that we can improve.

However, it doesn’t tell us what is wrong (or right) and how to improve – just that there might be an issue.

For example, there are many reasons that a patient might be unhappy with whether the GP listened to them or not.

The GP may have quite rightly refused to prescribe antibiotics that the GP knew would be ineffective, but the patient wanted. Or, the GP may have failed to make eye contact, made incorrect assumptions and seemed uninterested in the patient as a person. These are two very different situations that need completely different solutions, but potentially leading to the same level of dissatisfaction.

Black and white figures are fantastic for comparisons, but it is the richness of discussion and narrative, not figures that actually help practices understand why one is rated better than another and therefore helps us to improve services.

So, I ask that when you as patients read the results of these surveys, read the reviews online, and see the many different league tables about practices, consider them with care, caution and perhaps a pinch of salt. And if you want your practice to improve, get involved in your practice patient group to help the practice understand what is important to you and how we can really make a difference.