Choosing & Changing your GP

Once you are registered as a patient with the National Health Service, see Registering with the Health Service, you are entitled to choose your own GP and/or paediatrician who will be responsible for your medical care. To choose a doctor you will need to go to the 'Office for Choice and Revocation' (Ufficio Scelta e Revoca) found in your Local Health Authority (Azienda Sanitaria Locale – ASL) offices.

This office has a list of all the GPs in the area who still have spaces available on their patient list. A GP can have a maximum of one and a half thousand patients: a paediatrician only eight hundred.

A paediatrician can care for patients until they are fourteen years old; patients older than this will have to choose a GP. However, if a child's parents, or a child's legal guardian so wish, the child can be treated by a GP from the age of six.

A fundamental aspect of the relationship between doctors and patients is trust. Once this trust is gone, you can opt to change your GP by going again to your Local Health Authority. GPs also have the right to refuse a patient and, in this case, the Local Health Authority will inform you of their decision and ask you to choose another GP from those still able to accept new patients.