{"id":8,"date":"2011-09-14T09:43:50","date_gmt":"2011-09-14T09:43:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helpmeinvestigate.com\/health\/?p=8"},"modified":"2021-10-22T07:05:31","modified_gmt":"2021-10-22T07:05:31","slug":"data-patient-numbers-by-gp-practice-in-birmingham-east-and-north","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/helpmeinvestigate.com\/health\/2011\/09\/14\/data-patient-numbers-by-gp-practice-in-birmingham-east-and-north\/","title":{"rendered":"Data: patient numbers by GP practice in Birmingham East and North"},"content":{"rendered":"

As part of an investigation into GP surgery sizes in Birmingham<\/a> I’ve collected some initial data on GP sizes from Birmingham East and North Primary Care Trust.<\/p>\n

The data was gathered through submitting an FOI request after direct approaches took too long.<\/p>\n

The response to the FOI request with a link to the spreadsheet is available here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It gives patient numbers for GP surgeries as of the end of June: these vary wildly from over 37,000 at the biggest surgery to a few hundred at the smallest.<\/p>\n

Sadly the key information – how many GPs are employed at each surgery to respond to those patients – was not supplied. The accompanying email did mention 367 GPs on the medical performers list, which averages out at 4.7 per surgery – but it’s also not clear how many of those are employed full time or, indeed, practising at all.<\/p>\n

I am now waiting for the remainder of the data requested.<\/p>\n

UPDATE: I’ve just discovered a PDF with GP practice data for the whole of England<\/a> on the Prescription Pricing Division’s FOI disclosure pages<\/a>. Seems that may have been a better avenue than individual PCTs. Now, to extract that data from the PDF…<\/p>\n

In the meantime, here’s a quick visualisation of the data using Google Fusion Tables. Those in the top quartile of surgeries based on patient numbers have a large red marker; those in the third quartile (above average) have a large yellow marker. Those in the second quartile (below average) have a small green dot; and those in the bottom quartile have a small blue dot. It doesn’t really tell you anything other than where to look, and that possibly there are more large surgeries in the north than the south.<\/p>\n