More people than ever are raising concerns about doctors. In 2025 the General Medical Council — the body that regulates doctors in the UK — made 13,465 decisions about concerns that had been raised with it. That is a quarter more than the year before, and the biggest single-year rise in twenty years.

If you have ever wondered what actually happens when someone contacts the GMC, or whether you should, this article explains the process, what the numbers mean, and where a concern is usually best directed.

What the GMC does — and doesn't do

The GMC keeps the official register of doctors licensed to practise in the UK. Its job is to decide whether a doctor is safe to keep treating patients. That question is called fitness to practise.

It is important to be clear about what the GMC cannot do. It does not:

It looks at the individual professional, and only where there is a question about their conduct, performance or health that might put patients at risk or damage public trust in doctors.

Most concerns are best raised locally first

The GMC's own research found many people are unsure where to take a concern — and a lot of complaints arrive with the regulator when somewhere else could have resolved them faster. For most issues, the quickest route to an answer, an apology or a change is local:

Going local first is not a brush-off. These routes can look at the whole episode of care, involve everyone concerned, and usually respond far more quickly than a regulator can.

Go to the GMC when the concern is about a specific doctor and it is serious — for example dishonesty, a doctor who appears to be working while unwell or impaired, sexual or inappropriate behaviour, discrimination, or serious failures in care that put someone at risk of harm. You can also raise a concern with the GMC alongside a local complaint.

What happens to a concern once it reaches the GMC

Every concern goes through the same early stage, called triage. The GMC looks at what has been described and decides whether it raises a question about that doctor's fitness to practise, and whether the GMC is the right body to deal with it. At this stage the doctor is usually not yet told.

Three things can happen next:

  1. The concern is closed. This is the most common outcome — around nine in ten in 2025. The GMC may still tell the doctor's employer so it can be looked at locally.
  2. A provisional enquiry is opened. The GMC gathers a limited amount of extra information — records, or a response from the employer — to work out whether a full investigation is needed. In 2025 there were 554 of these; most were then closed.
  3. A full investigation is opened. This happened in 997 cases in 2025.

If an investigation goes ahead, evidence is gathered — medical records, witness statements, independent expert opinion — and shared with the doctor for their response. Two case examiners, one a doctor and one a non-medical member, then decide together what should happen. They can close the case, give advice, issue a warning, agree restrictions on how the doctor works, or refer the case to a tribunal.

The most serious cases go to a medical practitioners tribunal, which is independent of the GMC and holds hearings in public. A tribunal can restrict a doctor's practice, suspend them, or remove them from the register altogether. In 2025, 160 cases were concluded at tribunal; 68 doctors were suspended and 48 removed from the register.

Why so many concerns are closed early

Seeing that nine in ten concerns close at the first stage can feel dispiriting if you have raised one. It is worth understanding why it happens.

The threshold for a formal GMC investigation is deliberately high, because an investigation is a serious step that can take many months and can affect a doctor's ability to work while the facts are still unknown. Parliament set the GMC up to act where there is a real question of patient safety or public confidence — not to arbitrate every disagreement about care.

Many concerns that close at the GMC are genuine and important. They are often about communication that went wrong, a rushed appointment, a system under pressure, or an outcome that was disappointing but not the result of a doctor practising unsafely. Those are real problems, and they deserve a real response — but usually from the hospital, practice or clinic, which can actually change how the service runs.

Does the rise in complaints mean doctors are getting worse?

The evidence suggests not.

The increase has come almost entirely from members of the public. Referrals from employers, clinical leaders and other regulators — the people who see doctors working every day — have stayed flat. Other UK health regulators report the same rise, which points to something broader than medicine. And the GMC's own tracking of public opinion shows confidence in how doctors are regulated has remained steady.

The most likely explanations are that more people now know the GMC exists and how to contact it, that reporting has become easier, and that healthcare itself has become more pressured and more fragmented.

Support if you are involved in a case

Raising a concern, or being asked to give evidence, can be stressful — particularly if it follows something distressing.

The short version

The system is dealing with far more concerns than it used to, and it is still filtering them the same way: most are resolved early, a small number are formally investigated, and a very small number lead to a doctor being suspended or removed from the register.

If something about your care has gone wrong, speak up. Start with the people responsible for the service — and go to the GMC when the concern is about an individual doctor's safety, honesty or conduct.

This article is general information about how the regulatory process works and is not advice about any individual case. Figures are taken from the General Medical Council's "Concerns about fitness to practise: Annual statistical report, data for 2025", published July 2026 and available at gmc-uk.org.