Scores indicating how happy patients are with their GP surgeries are being published online for more than 8,000 practices in England.

The marks - out of 10 - reflect measures such as how easy it is to get an appointment and how well doctors and nurses explain conditions.

The results, based on a nationwide survey, are on the NHS Choices website.

But doctors' groups are concerned the scores fail to account for differing challenges faced by surgeries.

The Department of Health says the differing areas GPs practise in will be taken into account when the data is published.

People will be able to compare the performance of their own GPs with others in their local area.

This information will help patients decide which practice is best for them and drive up standards in the profession, the government said.

"Patients will now be able to see exactly what the experience of being a patient at each GP surgery is really like," health minister Lord Howe said.

Rating waiting times

The data will also allow patients to find GPs with experience of treating people with similar conditions as them.

There will be a breakdown of the scores, with marks for the length of time patients have to wait in reception and ratings of doctors' and nurses' listening skills.

Katherine Murphy, chief executive of the Patients Association, said: "Our helpline is seeing a trend of increasing complaints about GPs, covering a number of areas, including difficulties obtaining an appointment, complaints about behaviour of reception staff and other factors that affect their overall experience.

"These changes will not resolve these issues overnight, but providing clear and easily comparable data is certainly a step forward."

The British Medical Association agreed with the importance of receiving feedback from patients, but said it "must be done in a way that provides accurate information that GPs can act on".

"Reducing surgeries to a score out of 10 fails to allow patients to give detailed responses.

"The rating would also fail to take into account the differing challenges that each GP practice may face, especially in terms of resources which are increasingly being squeezed by government cuts," a BMA spokesperson said.

The data has been taken from the GP Patient Survey which was filled in by over 1m randomly selected people across England last year.

The marks - out of 10 - reflect measures such as how easy it is to get an appointment and how well doctors and nurses explain conditions.

The results, based on a nationwide survey, are on the NHS Choices website.

But doctors' groups are concerned the scores fail to account for differing challenges faced by surgeries.

The Department of Health says the differing areas GPs practise in will be taken into account when the data is published.

People will be able to compare the performance of their own GPs with others in their local area.

This information will help patients decide which practice is best for them and drive up standards in the profession, the government said.

"Patients will now be able to see exactly what the experience of being a patient at each GP surgery is really like," health minister Lord Howe said.

Katherine Murphy, chief executive of the Patients Association, said: "Our helpline is seeing a trend of increasing complaints about GPs, covering a number of areas, including difficulties obtaining an appointment, complaints about behaviour of reception staff and other factors that affect their overall experience.

I will pull this apart later but, in short, it's a load of b*ll*cks.

So how would you do it?
Are doctors so sacrosant that they can't be rated?

I have no qualms about assessing how good a surgery is but have issues with the way they are doing it.

I've worked in several GP surgeries and I've been a patient in a few different surgeries so I feel I have a better overview than some.

My own surgery, for example, is right across the road from me. But getting an appointment is horrendous. Because of the local population (largely ethnic minorities and on benefits, or elderly/disabled), they've gone for a system that means you have to ring up on the day to get an appointment. There are no advanced appointments. The two times I've needed to see a doctor, I found it easier to pass on a message for them to contact me and book an appointment that way. It's a bit unfair that I can get around the system, I agree but it's even more unfair that I even have to. However, despite having in the order of 8-10 doctors, it's the only way they can manage things.

The surgery I work at is located in a posh area. The patients tend to be business managers/solicitors/dentists ie high-end professionals. These people are used to getting their way as soon as they snap their fingers. For them, it's inconceivable that I'm running even five minutes late. In a patient participation group, they wanted us to provide a free coffee machine in our surgery! Our appointment system is such that half of all appointments each day are book-on-the-day. The other half are book-in-advance. This means if you ring up on the day before a set time, you are guaranteed to be seen the same day by a doctor. This ordinarily should be enough but patients here don't like that. They want to see a specific doctor at a specific time and if it's not convenient to them, they're not happy. There are usually enough slots to book and see a doctor up to a month in advance so if it's not an urgent problem, it can be dealt with at any point in the next four weeks.

The entire point of the above is that both practices would score lowly but for different reasons. Compare this to a colleague who works in the sticks and the patients are grateful just for being seen and very apologetic to have troubled them. They have no qualms about him running an hour late or even cancelling a surgery! Yet this practice would score highly despite providing a poor service in comparison to the practice I'm working at. This is the crux of what I'm ranting about and why I disagree.

As a trainee, my performance is closely monitored. I have to get patients to fill in a questionnaire. I have to get all staff members to fill in a questionnaire. It's all anonymised. My trainer has to do an evaluation on me. In short, I'm assessed from multiple angles as to whether I'm fit to work as a fully-fledged GP or not.

So once you've passed that's it for patient input.
You've out forward an argument why the rating system put forward won't work but no alternative. A rant is good i do it all the time
But you have to be careful or you will sound like so many of the healthcare professional representatives who seem to disagree on any proposal almost on principal but never seem to offer anything productive.

We shall see.

Publishing the cause and response would allow surgeries to try and improve while also letting patients know why the problem is occurring.

I couldn't see any 0-10 scores for my surgery, just one review calling the staff racist.

Well, they don’t seem to give any lee-way on this criterion with schools, so why should GP surgeries be any different? Make people better, and fast. Death is not an option.

Once the data is collected, the rest is down to statistics and interpretation. Your surgeries won't be compared (by anyone who's opinion counts) individually against dissimilar peers. so nobody will look at your score - serving well heeled but irritable clients and say you are bad because another surgery tending to farmers has a higher score. And I'm sure an analytic method will be used to even out the effects of the nutters.

The inferences to be drawn will include general facts about certain types of environment and the attitudes that pertain within them. So we will have tons more stats available about consumer attitudes to healthcare than before. Any effect on your personal career will surely be interpreted against this backdrop of relevant information about how grumpy your wife beating alcoholic neighbours are expected to be with their doctors, and how fussy your corporate raiding head hunting advertisers are expected to be about you.

And the handful of consumers who will put this information to practical use when choosing a surgery will do what I did when I looked at the online reviews for local GP surgeries a few months ago, which is think about how awful all their child stabbing, beer stealing, wife immolating fellow citizens are, and take their opinions with a pinch of salt.