Gera Practice Access Score (GPAS) — Methodology

1. What is GPAS?

The Gera Practice Access Score (GPAS/10) is a proprietary index published by GeraClinic that measures the relative access burden of NHS GP practices in England. A higher score means fewer patients per full-time equivalent (FTE) GP — indicating less pressure on GP capacity and, potentially, better access for patients.

GPAS is computed from the NHS England General Practice Workforce Statistics (April 2026), published 28 May 2026, licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

2. Data sources

• NHS England General Practice Workforce Statistics — April 2026 (practice-level CSV). Publication page. Fields used: TOTAL_PATIENTS, TOTAL_GP_HC, TOTAL_GP_FTE, PCN_NAME, ICB_NAME, REGION_NAME.
• NHS Organisation Data Service — epraccur (updated nightly). Fields used: practice address, postcode, phone number, active status.

3. Scope

• Only ACTIVE practices in England with ≥ 100 registered patients are included (6,123 practices total).
• The GPAS is normalised across the 600 largest practices by registered patient list size — the scope of this directory.
• GPAS is not a quality rating. It measures workload pressure (patient burden per GP), not clinical outcomes, CQC inspection results, or appointment availability.

4. Formula

Where min and max are the lowest and highest patients-per-FTE-GP ratios across the 600 practices in this directory. The result is clamped 0–10 and rounded to one decimal place.

Example: A practice with 1,747 patients per FTE GP (equal to the national median) achieves a GPAS that reflects its position relative to the top-600 practice cohort.

5. National benchmark

National median patients per FTE GP

1,747

All ~6,123 practices, April 2026

National aggregate patients per FTE GP

1,676

Aggregate (total patients ÷ total FTE GPs), April 2026

6. Null values

When TOTAL_GP_FTE is 0 or missing (marked "Fully estimated — no data provided" in the NHS source), patientsPerFteGp and GPAS are set to null and displayed as "not available". These practices are included in the directory but excluded from the GPAS normalisation range.

7. Limitations

• GPAS is based on the total GP FTE, including GPs in training. Some practices carry a higher proportion of trainee GPs, which may inflate their apparent FTE and lower their patientsPerFteGp ratio.
• The NHS Workforce data excludes "fully estimated" practices from the FTE figures; these are counted as null in GPAS.
• GPAS does not reflect opening hours, appointment availability, patient satisfaction, or CQC inspection results.
• This directory covers the 600 largest practices by patient list. The remaining ~5,523 practices with ≥ 100 patients are not included.

8. Update cadence

The NHS England GP Workforce Statistics are published monthly (on or around the last working day of the month following the reference period). GPAS is re-computed and this directory is updated with each monthly release. The current dataset reflects April 2026 data.

9. Attribution

Contains public sector information published by NHS England and the NHS Organisation Data Service, licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. View licence.