DOCTORS in North Yorkshire are among the country's best, according to a new survey.

The GP Patient Survey was carried out on behalf of the Government to find out how patients rated the service they were getting from their family doctor.

More than two million people took part by answering questionnaires handed out in their surgeries.

GP practices were judged in a range of areas, including how easy they were to contact and whether doctors gave patients a choice of hospital to go to.

Patients in North Yorkshire consistently rated their doctors among the best in the country - and well above neighbouring areas and the English average.

Most North Yorkshire patients - 94 per cent - said they could get an appointment at their surgery either on the same day as phoning, or within two days. That was well above the English average of 86 per cent. In East Yorkshire, the figure was 88 per cent, while in Leeds, it was 86 per cent. When it came to whether patients were able to get an appointment more than two days in advance, 85 per cent of North Yorkshire patients said they could, above the English average of 75 per cent.

Ninety-three per cent of the county's patients said they were able to get an appointment with a specific GP when they asked for one - compared with 88 per cent in England.

Eighty-eight per cent of patients in North Yorkshire also said they were happy with their surgery's opening times - compared with 84 per cent across England.

Don Sykes, practice manager at York's Clifton Health Centre, which has five GPs and more than 5,000 patients, said GP practices also did their own in-house survey of patients.

He said: "Every practice surveys their own patients with these sorts of questions and the results are available to anybody who wants to see them."

Dr Janet Soo-Chung, chief executive of North Yorkshire and York Primary Care Trust, said: "I'd like to congratulate all of our GPs on the results of this survey which clearly shows what we have known for a long time - North Yorkshire patients enjoy extremely high-quality GP services.

"One of the key priorities for the PCT at the moment is to further develop practice-based commissioning, which is a system whereby GPs will have responsibility for deciding on the community services for their local population.

"Under this system individual GPs, or groups of GPs working together, will have greater control over the healthcare delivered to their patients; surveys like this show that patients should have confidence in the quality of GP care in North Yorkshire."