The CQC has today published risk indices for most GP practices, using readily available data to give an indicator of the priority that should be afforded to their inspection. The great majority of South Reading practices fall into the low risk category - Band 6 - along with about half the practices in England. So we can expect few early inspections by CQC at most South Reading practices. The banding is based on a scoring according to a number of criteria available from practice surveys and practice returns. Full details are available on the CQC web site. They scoring is merely an indicator and should not be considered in any way definitive. In South Reading Chatham Street Surgery and University Medical Centre were placed in band 1 - the highest risk band, Pembroke surgery, Whitley Villa surgery and Melrose (Dr Williams) in band 5 and others in band 6, except for the Walk-in Centre (not classified) and London Road surgery (not classified it had been recently inspected), If South Reading had followed the national figures we might have expected 2 practices in band 1, 1 in band 2, 1 in band 3, 2 in band 4, 3 in band 5, and 11 in band 6. As it was we had no presence in bands 2,3 and 4 and band 6 made up the difference. The CQC admits that the scores make no explicit allowance for different populations although some of the component measures do have a built-in allowance. Given the classification for South Reading practices some might think the indicators more indicative of demographic factors than of inherent risk. The upshot is - expect just a few CQC inspections of GP practices in South Reading (and other parts of Reading!) in the near future.