The pressure is on the medical practice covering the Bridport and Beaminster area as it tries to recruit more GPs - but each doctor is NOT dealing with 10,000 patients, as official figures have suggested.

It comes after the News reported last week that the Ammonite Health Partnership, which comprises Bridport Medical Centre, Tunnel Road Surgery in Beaminster and Pound Piece Surgery in Maiden Newton has the most patients per doctor in the county - 10,544 patients per full-time GP.

The News has attempted to clarify the figures - which came from NHS Digital, the national provider of information, data and IT systems for the health service - but a senior partner at the practice says they are "simply not correct".

The figures were revealed in an analysis of GP practices with the most and least patients per doctor, and led to the British Medical Association stating that large disparities in GP to patient ratios throughout England were "wholly unacceptable", calling on the Government to address the longstanding issues.

But Dr Ian Platt from Ammonite Healthcare says the figures for the local practice are not accurate.

He said Ammonite has currently nine partners and four salaried GPs working a mix of full and part time - in total this equates to 9.625 whole time GP equivalents. With a practice population of 24,500, the true figure per whole time equivalent is therefore 2,545 patients per GP.

"This remains above the national average of 2,000, but clearly in no way is comparable to the headline figure," said Dr Platt.

He added: "In addition to the registered GPs, the practice currently also employs three GP registrars (GPs in training), three nurse practitioners and three paramedics. The practice also utilizes at significant expense GP locums to further complement the service provision. All these individuals are not counted in the patients per GP statistic. They are critical however for us to provide a skill mix approach in an environment where there are simply not enough GPs available."

Dr Platt says as the article highlighted there is a national shortage of GPs.

He explained: "Following GP retirements and departures, Ammonite practice has been trying to actively recruit GPs for the last 12 months without success.

"As a practice, recruitment remains a challenge with health professionals resisting the benefits of living and working in West Dorset, preferring to work in urban centres. As the article noted some regions are worse affected than others.

"Personally, as a GP working in Bridport for over 25 years I can't think of any better place to work!"

Dr Platt said he was concerned the figures quoted in the News may hinder recruitment and also concern patients.

He added: "To be positive though, despite reduced number of GPs compared to the national average, appointment access remains good.

"On average, Ammonite receives new 1,050 GP appointment requests per week.

"To deliver an efficient appointment system, six months ago, the practice introduced an appointment triage process, whereby all appointments are reviewed by a GP partner. Appointments are then created on an urgent or routine basis dependant on need.

"This allows us today, to deliver urgent appointments on the same day and routine appointments within 7 days. In contrast prior to pandemic it was very common to wait more than a month for a routine appointment.

"To deliver the above, we ask our patients to submit either an online “Econsult”, or on calling the practice, give the receptionist a brief description of the medical problem. This provides the information that allows the triaging GP to determine the urgency of the request and the correct appointment to be generated. The more information provided allows us to make the decision with greater accuracy. This is all to enable US to help ‘YOU’- the patient."