Recording GP appointment data at practice level

• General practice appointment data (GPAD) have been collected by NHS Digital for the last five years, but have only recently been made available to the public
• The anonymised GPAD data are extracted monthly by NHS Digital
• The data only reflects the ‘appointment book’ in the clinical system, so ad-hoc phone calls, face-to-face conversations and admin work will not be recorded
• Make sure your practice appointment book is correctly configured, and that your slots are defined as bookable, as these are the appointments that GPAD will extract
• Consider arranging a training session for consulting staff to ensure they are recording their interactions correctly and uniformly
• Consider peer-reviewing your data with similar practices or across your PCN

Dr Jonathan Inglesfield is a GP in Cranleigh, Surrey and clinical director of primary care transformation at Surrey Heartlands ICS