GPs in Salford: the 10 GP surgeries with the longest waits to see a doctor after booking an appointment

Data has shown which are the surgeries where most patients face a wait of more than four weeks between booking an appointment and actually seeing a doctor.

Patients at some doctor’s surgeries in Salford have to wait far longer for appointments than at others, NHS figures show.

The data shows how many patients had to wait more than four weeks for an appointment at their local practice in October, revealing the strain many surgeries are under.

These are the 10 GP practices in Salford with the highest percentage of appointments involving waits of more than 28 days. Practices which had fewer than 100 appointments in October have been omitted. The worst figure in Salford was 16% of appointments involving a wait of more than 28 days. This is massively higher than the England-wide figure for October of 3% of appointments booked then taking more than four weeks for the patient to see a doctor.

Nearly half of appointments in October (49%) across England as a whole took place on the day they were booked, analysis of the NHS Digital data found.

There are several factors that influence the length of time a patient has to wait for an appointment, including availability at the practice, patient availability and the urgency of the issue.

The British Medical Association, the trade union for doctors, said the monthly figures were the “highest level of GP appointments on record”.

And the Royal College of GPs said the figures showed “how hard GPs and their teams are working to deliver increasingly complex care to a growing number of patients, against a backdrop of severe workforce shortages”.