BMA works with NHS Choices on GP ratings

The BMA’s GP committee has confirmed it is working with NHS Choices to enable patients to rate and review their GP practices on the flagship NHS website.

The General Practitioner Committee described the concept as a “meaningless popularity contest” in December when the proposed service was announced by health minister Ben Bradshaw but has now decided to work with NHS Choices as it develops the service.

Dr Chaand Nagpaul, a GPC negotiator and lead of IT issues, said the GPC wanted to minimise the risk of misleading information being published.

He told EHI Primary Care: “Given that the government is pushing ahead with these proposals we want to try and mitigate any adverse consequences from it.”

Patients have been able to post feedback on their hospital experience on NHS Choices since the website’s launch in June 2007 and the plan is now to enable patients to post comments about their GP practice covering aspects such as access and courtesy. The feedback functionality is expected to go live by the autumn.

Comments about hospitals are moderated before publication and hospitals are given the right of reply and the same is expected to apply to GP practices. The site’s moderation rules state that comments on named individuals will not be allowed and that comments should not include accusations of clinical negligence or defamatory comments.

Dr Nagpaul said the GPC welcomed the decision to allow comments only on practices rather than on individual GPs or other named staff members and also the fact that comments would be moderated.

However, he added: “I wouldn’t say we are supporting this as we feel that patients already have the ability to feedback their views through existing mechanisms but we hope we can mitigate the potential worse effects.”

Dr Nagpaul said the GPC was very supportive of practices trying to get a better understanding of their patients’ views and had recently issued guidance on how practices could get a better understanding of their patients’ views.

NHS Choices recorded 7m visitors in March and a total of 7000 comments had been posted against hospitals by then.

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