Where are the best NHS doctors (GPs) in London?

April 28, 2014 11:11 AM

Hi! We (husband, wife, child) are moving to London soon (more questions on that to come!) One thing that's really important to me is to be in an area that we can register with a really good GP. I've lived in the UK before, and had hit or miss experiences, and don't want this to happen again -- so much so that I want to suss out the great GPs to help make a decision on where we should live. So, who/where are the awesome GPs in London? Or how else would I go about researching this?
posted by caoimhe to Health & Fitness (6 answers total)

(Don't live in London.) Not sure you'd get a sensible answer to this because different people have different attitudes as to what is a good or bad doctor. Also GPs tend to cluster into larger practices so you register with the practice and may get assigned to a specific doctor on a rota basis. Catchment areas can be quite small so it might be tricky living in exactly the right place.
posted by epo at 1:00 PM on April 28, 2014 [2 favorites]

Best answer: I do live in London and I agree with epo, even with personal recommendations (which will be massively subjective) you'll be hard pushed to find enough info to distinguish one individual Dr from another, and it's especially rare in London to get through care from the same person at every visit. You can however find specific information (including patient reviews) about all NHS practices at the NHS choices website - search by area, or postcode.
posted by freya_lamb at 1:54 PM on April 28, 2014 [1 favorite]

Best answer: You can find GP listings by area and filter by rating on the nhs.uk site. Here are 5-star-rated practices within 25 miles of central London. (My personal technique is just to register with the nearest large multi-GP practice, there's a decent chance that there'll be at least one good GP there.)
posted by corvine at 5:18 PM on April 28, 2014

There's also the GP-Patient survey - searchable by service users' responses and area here.
posted by corvine at 5:20 PM on April 28, 2014

Catchment areas are ridiculously small. I moved half a mile down the road in Pimlico and was forced to switch GPs.
posted by mani at 11:26 PM on April 28, 2014

I'm sort of coming in to anti-recommend the NHS Choices ratings, or at least to beware.

If you notice, there are rarely more than a few ratings. It is more about who decides to go online than anything else. One of my London GPs was amazing and in fact I purposefully went online to see their rating and was shocked to see only one review - and a horrible one at that. Someone had clearly had a bad day and decided to take it out on their GP.

If there were hundreds of reviews that sort of thing might right itself. But there aren't. Then, take into consideration what freya_lamb says - there are lots of GPs at each practice and they have a ongoing rotation of interns. So these few reviews aren't even about the same doctors or about doctors no longer there. You begin to see the problem, I hope.
posted by vacapinta at 6:56 AM on April 29, 2014